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Murray Browne
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Murray Browne
2021-05-13 11:23
Thank you, Derek.
Greetings from the west coast of Canada.
Good afternoon, eastern Canada. Emote from Tla'amin. Thank you for the opportunity.
My name is Murray Browne. I'm legal counsel for Tla'amin.
Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Murray Browne. I'm legal counsel for Tla'amin.
Twenty-five years ago I began my reconciliation journey working for INAC in Les Terrasses de la Chaudière. Then I went to work for the BC Treaty Commission, and for the last 20 years I've worked exclusively with first nations. I've been on a 20-year journey with the Tla'amin to negotiate and implement their treaty. I also work with four other nations in advanced treaty negotiations and with over 30 first nations in the development and implementation of their land codes. I was also on the legal team for the Tsilhqot'in title case.
What we want to do this morning is to jump straight to our recommendations. I also want to acknowledge our MP, Rachel Blaney, who's been very supportive and very proactive in reconciliation efforts.
I want to determine whether the committee members have our written submissions. We were hoping to refer to them. I'll proceed regardless, but I want to say that in our written submission, we have a summary of recommendations. There are 14 of them, and if we have time afterward, we'll highlight some issues.
I'll go through them quickly.
First of all, there's a lack of stable funding. You've probably heard that from everyone.
Second, in our view treaties should require orders from the chief justice of all courts to confirm court enforcement of first nation laws. You shouldn't have to spend $100,000 like K'ómoks did to just get simple confirmation that your laws are enforceable.
Treaties should confirm, upon request, that arrangements will be made with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada or the BC Prosecution Service to prosecute. We have the unfortunate situation that the Public Prosecution Service of Canada has said that it can only enforce COVID bylaws under the Indian Act. That's a nice step under the Indian Act, but it's problematic otherwise.
We need changes to the federal offence act and the BC Offence Act. They need to be amended to refer specifically to the authority of treaty first nations.
We need to confirm that treaty nation enforcement officers are peace officers without having to go to court to get this confirmation, provided they have the training.
We need to retain all of the authorities under the Indian Act as well as under the land code. One of the unfortunate aspects of treaty in British Columbia is that it's about taking away things from first nations. It's the opposite of what it should be. The minute Tla'amin walked through the treaty door, they lost their property transfer tax authority, FNLMA jurisdiction to appoint their own justices of the peace, property tax authority to enforce issues by adding them to property taxes, etc. That's not the way that it should be.
I was really happy to hear the chief of the Akwesasne speak about appointing their own justices of the peace. Tla'amin had that authority under the land code. They do not have it under treaty, and we need to get that back so that they can appoint culturally appropriate justices of the peace.
We need to confirm the authority to evict drug dealers. It's a huge problem in first nation communities. Under land code, FNMLA, we pass a community protection law and we evict drug dealers. I've been involved in a number of those. The nation passes a law. We ask the RCMP to enforce. If they do not enforce, we hire private security and we pass a council resolution. We designate someone as a dangerous individual and we evict them. We also have other measures, for restraining orders and so on. They're hard to enforce, because the federal system thinks that you need a criminal conviction and court orders, and we can't get those. There has to be respect for first nations dealing with their community safety and protection issues.
We also need to think that enforcement is not only about prosecution. Much of enforcement is education, but it is also ticketing. Right now, first nations in B.C. do not have access to municipal ticketing the way municipalities do. I don't know about other provinces, but we have to have ticketing enforcement, because it works. One of the things that really work in British Columbia and other provinces is that if I, as a non-aboriginal citizen, don't pay my traffic fines, I don't get my driver's licence renewed. That's a powerful and effective technique. Why don't first nations have that? If I don't pay my fines for illegal dumping, the municipality tags them onto my property taxes and sells my home. That's a good enforcement mechanism. First nations don't have that.
We also need to sort out issues with DFO. DFO is resisting efforts of Tla'amin to enforce their laws and protect their marine resources. Historically, the Tla'amin had traditional laws for protecting and managing their territory. They had bountiful resources until DFO came along and started mismanaging them. Right now, DFO is resisting Tla'amin's efforts.
I'll finish here. I know time is going to be running out shortly, but Tla'amin is an amazing, beautiful place where oysters grow in abundance. It's one of the few places in the world where you can drive through the park at Okeover and harvest a bucket of clams right from the beach. Tla'amin guardians try to protect that area. Unfortunately, DFO resists them. We have buses of tourists coming in, four busloads of 50 people each, tourists from Vancouver on a day trip, all overharvesting, taking all the oysters so Tla'amin can't get them. DFO will not support Tla'amin, and they in fact tell people that Tla'amin guardians have no enforcement powers.
I'll finish there. We have a number of other items that we could highlight, but those are some of our top 10.
Thank you.
Brooks Arcand-Paul
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Brooks Arcand-Paul
2021-05-13 11:39
[Witness spoke in Nêhiyawêwin and provided the following text:]
Ahâw nitotemtik kiatamiskâtinawâw kâhkîyaw, nitikawin sîpîysis, kipohtakaw ohciniya.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Dear friends, I am greeting all of you in a good way, my name is sîpîysis, and I am from the Alexander First Nation.
[English]
Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Brooks Arcand-Paul. My traditional name is Sîpîysis, which means “little river” in nêhiyawewin, my people's language.
I'm the vice-president of the Indigenous Bar Association of Canada. I'm also an in-house counsel for the Alexander First Nation. I'm here today to represent the Indigenous Bar Association and to discuss the important topic of law enforcement on first nations reserves.
As a practitioner on reserve, and having primarily first nations in Alberta as clients while in private practice, I am intimately aware of the issues that exist within the framework of enforcement on reserve in Alberta and certainly on the Prairies. I've been dealing with this issue regularly in my practice. The same problems are highlighted time and time again.
First, we must acknowledge that self-government and self-determination won't happen if we fail to address the elephant in the room. That elephant is Canada's ongoing paternalism towards its indigenous partners in Confederation.
Our treaties have given this country the authority to exist. Before those treaties were concluded, this very country recognized that my ancestors, and those of other indigenous groups who entered into similar relationships with the Crown, had decision-making capacities, including the application and use of our own legal systems that were never subordinate to any government in Canada.
Further, Canadian courts have repeated since Confederation that indigenous peoples continue to have the right to use their laws for areas including, but not limited to, family law, adoption, and marriage, and have given deference to nations that enact their own laws and customs. For a piece of legislation such as the Indian Act or FNLMA to continue to exert paternalism is discriminatory. It is shameful for Canada to treat its partner in Confederation as incapable of making legal decisions outside the confines of legislation.
If we are truly intent on getting back to the relationship that was intended under our treaties and modern agreements, or as required on unceded territories, we have to reconceptualize what it means to recognize indigenous legal rights. If we're not doing a wholescale removal of the acts, we need to get creative in how we move forward together in a good way, as was intended when our ancestors both became beneficiaries of our continued sharing of the territories currently called Canada.
I will move to the next issue that first nations experience when it comes to the limited law-making rights afforded to them under the act. When a bylaw is intra vires a band council's authority, the most common and pressing issue remains enforcement—that police forces and the public prosecution services of Canada will not enforce these fully legal instruments under federal jurisdiction.
In terms of law enforcement, the first issue is the capacity of a first nation to draft, implement and enforce bylaws under existing regimes. It's expensive to draft bylaws. Many first nations don't have in-house counsel to assist them in drafting exercises to cover the many different layers that these bylaws must adhere to in order to be legally binding.
The issues may include, but aren't limited to, procedural fairness, privacy laws, human rights, charter rights and overall constitutionality.
Most recently, an RCMP detachment local to one of my clients stated that they are not able to enforce band bylaws on the reserve, with perhaps the exception of trespass bylaws, and that it was incumbent on first nations themselves to go through the onerous process of hiring an officer to enforce such bylaws. Additionally, the RCMP agent went on further to mention that some officers are not educated on how they could enforce such bylaws. However, I do want to highlight that there was an interest by the RCMP to assist in enforcement.
If they were given the tools to do so, first nations may be better suited to exercise the law-making capacities with the assistance of their neighbouring police detachments or through their own officers where applicable. This latter option obviously comes at the nation's own cost to draft bylaws; apply to become an authorized employer of an officer; purchase equipment, including appropriate vehicles, uniforms, firearms, etc.; and hire a fair complement of officers to ensure coverage to the nation. Many nations do not have spare funds to even consider engaging in these activities, as they have other pressing issues to deal with, including the ongoing demands of the pandemic.
Over the course of my work on these issues, I've been stonewalled by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada with regard to the enforcement of bylaws for first nations.
Mr. Richstone raised this issue before the committee the other day.
The public prosecutions office is not seized with the ability to prosecute these bylaws, which Mr. Richstone affectionately referred to as “community laws”.
I would argue that such bylaws, formed under the act, are within the ambit of federal laws, given the first nations' stature within the federation. However, I would go one step further and recognize that Mr. Richstone was correct in his statement that laws passed by first nations should be attracted with the appropriate enforcement by all levels of law enforcement in Canada. Many of your agents are offering their willingness to do so, and I would further argue that they are trying to be good treaty partners in extending their willingness to enforce our laws. It is now your turn.
In sum, I make three major recommendations: a review of the bylaw-making capacities of first nations to amend the act to reflect that first nations have the authority to enact laws, not just bylaws; that such laws be adequately funded for first nations to develop and/or enforce; and finally, that such laws be enforced by those charged to do so, akin to the laws of other law-making jurisdictions in the federation, including your own.
Kinanâskomitin.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Deborah Doss-Cody
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Deborah Doss-Cody
2021-05-13 11:47
[Witness spoke in St’at’imcets and provided the following text:]
K’alhwá7al’ap nsek’wnúk’w7a. Dee Doss-Cody nskwátsitsa. St’at’imc, xaxl?i´pmeckan xaxli’p.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Hello, friends and relatives. My name is Dee Doss-Cody. I am St’at’imc, from Fountain, crest of the hill.
[English]
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Dee Doss-Cody. I'm from the St'at'imc Nation and the Xaxli'p Fountain reserve.
I am the chief officer of the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service. We were established in 1988. We are a program-funded, stand-alone police service, the only stand-alone police service in the province of British Columbia.
Stl'atl'imx nation consists of 11 communities, and the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service provides policing to 10 of the 11 communities in the Stl'atl'imx nation.
The Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service falls within two different RCMP policing jurisdictions in the Stl'atl'imx territory. We are part of the Sea to Sky RCMP district as well as the Kelowna district, which is a southeast district. Our traditional territory spans both those districts. As you will note, communicating with two different entities and two different Crown options creates some challenges for the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service.
We are governed by the provincial Police Act in the province of British Columbia. We have an MOU with the IIO, the Independent Investigations Office.
Our police officers are trained at the Justice Institute of British Columbia. Our training is the same as the Vancouver city police service or any other municipal police service in the province of British Columbia. Our officers can apply to other agencies if they wish to go forward and resume their career with another police agency. We have the exact same training in the province, and we adhere to the same police standards in British Columbia.
We have entered into a 10-year funding agreement, which is a tripartite agreement with the 10 Stl'atl'imx nation communities, the Province of British Columbia and Canada. The chiefs of the Stl'atl'imx have signed that agreement, and that is how we came to be.
We do have a culture component to our policing. The Stl'atl'imx nation has a declaration day, which was just a couple of days ago. In 1911, a declaration of the Lillooet tribes was signed. Every year, that day is recognized, much like Canada Day, if you will. Each time a new officer joins our police service, they are sworn in. The nation has created their own swearing-in ceremony. When we have a new officer, they are drummed in and welcomed in by the nation, and they then come and dance in. They are welcomed in by the nation as an acknowledgement of their choosing to join the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service. That is one of the things that we do.
The Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service, as you have heard from the FNCPA, is not legislated. We are a program. We are funded as a supplemental service. We are not a supplemental police service; we are the police service for the Stl'atl'imx nation, but we are funded with program dollars, and programs can be cut, so there's no sustainability. There's fear that if it's decided, we will no longer exist.
The Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police Service has one of the highest Criminal Code stats in the province of British Columbia. We are second to the Victoria police service. We investigate everything from domestic assault and sexual assaults to serious motor vehicle accidents. We get assistance from specialized police services in the RCMP. If there's a fatal accident, we have them come in, or we have IHIT, the integrated homicide investigation team, come in if we have a homicide that occurs in our community. We do rely on the RCMP and we partner with them. We have a good working relationship. We are currently working on a new MOU with the RCMP so that it's clear to everyone what our roles are in our policing jurisdictions.
We do have restorative justice in our nation. We have utilized it. It is effective. Currently with COVID, it is challenged, due to the fact that people can't get together. That creates some issues.
Currently there are 12 police officers. We did receive extra funding to recruit four more officers, so we will be up to a total of 14. We did receive $2.5 million in funding for a new building. There is a new building in the Mount Currie area. Another one is being built in the Líl'wat area.
We do not have cells. We utilize the RCMP cells when we arrest someone and bring them before a JP to attend court. Our travel police territory is 2.2 million hectares—that is 8,494 square miles or 22,000 kilometres. That is how big our territorial jurisdiction is. It is huge. We actually did an experiment where we patrolled the area to see if we could fit that in within one of our shifts. It took one of my officers a whole eight hours to go from one end of the territory to the other. And that's not stopping to go to the washroom, to eat, or anything like that. That is just driving through and being that body that the people see from here up, the police officer with no legs, if you will.
View Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe Profile
BQ (QC)
Gracias a ustedes.
Mr. Chair, I would like to advise you that I will be raising a point of order at the end, and I do not want the witnesses to see that.
Christiane Fox
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Christiane Fox
2021-05-11 11:19
Kwe kwe. Ulaakut. Tansi. Hello.
Today I'm speaking to you from the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg people.
I would like to begin by confirming that through the programs and investments administered through the investing in Canada plan, Indigenous Services Canada is working very closely with indigenous partners and our colleagues here today to achieve better outcomes.
Since budget 2016, Indigenous Services Canada has received more than $4.29 billion in targeted funding under the plan. As of December 31, 2020, $3.43 billion has been invested to support vital community infrastructure projects on reserve.
Through budget 2021, the federal government is proposing a historic new investment of over $18 billion over the next five years to improve the quality of life and create new opportunities for people living in indigenous communities.
These investments will continue to help indigenous communities deal with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The investments will also support continued action on infrastructure.
In addition to the report's findings, the Auditor General also brings to light the dynamic nature of funding relationships between the Government of Canada and first nations partners, demonstrating a need for cross-government collaboration.
To increase the financial impact and address the infrastructure needs of first nations communities, Indigenous Services Canada uses a portfolio approach for the allocation and reporting of targeted infrastructure investments.
This means that projects may be supported by multiple funding sources, not all of which fall under the investing in Canada umbrella.
To ensure transparency and results, a robust reporting process has been implemented, allowing both Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada to provide regular updates on their overall portfolio of infrastructure projects in first nations communities.
This includes an infrastructure investment interactive map that has been available on our site since June 2018, and which is updated on a quarterly basis. Given the department's focus on water, we also provide information by community as we work hard to eliminate long-term drinking-water advisories.
We're committed to helping first nations achieve their vision of self-determination, and to respecting their autonomy by seeking opportunities to reduce reporting requirements. To this end, the funding requirements, methodology and delivery of the program must reflect the evolving relationship between the federal government and first nations.
While we understand that reporting requirements will be different for every program, a flexible approach is needed for legacy funds, which include programs established prior to budget 2016 and which amount to approximately $14 billion over 12 years.
First nations communities experience different realities than do cities and municipalities across Canada. Indigenous Services Canada does not support increasing reporting requirements for infrastructure legacy funds, as these funds are distributed to first nations for the management of their communities as a whole, not just for infrastructure projects.
As we move forward on the path towards self-determination and fulfill the vision of the department—which is to support and empower indigenous peoples to independently deliver services to their communities—we must note that first nations communities are responsible for carrying out infrastructure projects in their communities.
Through the investing in Canada plan, we've been able to support the health and well-being of indigenous communities by providing clean drinking water, reliable energy solutions and affordable housing units. However, we acknowledge that work remains to be done.
These investments are helping to meet the infrastructure needs of first nations communities and will lay the foundation for a long-term investment strategy in first nation community infrastructure to build healthy, safe and prosperous communities.
We will continue to engage and work with Infrastructure Canada to develop a consistent manner to provide comprehensive reporting on the investing in Canada plan.
Thank you. Meegwetch. Qujannamiik. Marsi. Merci.
Jacques Borne
View Jacques Borne Profile
Jacques Borne
2021-05-10 15:38
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Should we abolish the November 11 commemorations? What is the purpose of military commemorations? Do we want to abolish this holiday? Did we bring our children to the cenotaph on November 11 prior to the pandemic?
I give presentations to high school students during Veterans' Week and I bring with me special guests, such as a corporal who was injured in Afghanistan. Our current generation looks at the past differently. It is not unusual to commemorate happy events such as the end of the war, the rescinding of a discriminatory law, or the prowess of an inventor or a hero.
Commemorations can be national or local events, which are held on a regular or occasional basis. A commemoration is an official ceremony organized to retain in our natural consciousness an event of collective history and to serve as an example or model. It engages the entire country. Senior officials must attend commemorations and gather together citizens to enhance the collective memory. Commemorations give rise to events that take place outside of the ceremony. National ceremonies commemorate the memory of different facts, great men, combatants, and civil and military victims.
I am currently a board member of the National Field of Honour, the military cemetery in Pointe-Claire. More than 22,000 soldiers of all ranks have been laid to rest there and many commemorative ceremonies are held there. I am certain that one third of those present here today are not even aware of the existence of this special cemetery in Pointe-Claire.
I attend many commemorations especially as a member of the 3rd Montreal Field Battery of Artillery and also as the person in charge of the museum. It is a mobile museum. We have three trucks dating back to 1943, three 25-pounder cannons, a Jeep ambulance and, believe it or not, two 1818 cannons, and it is all in working order. The 3rd Montreal Field Battery of Artillery goes to 10 different locations during Veterans' Week. We participate in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Montreal. We are often invited to national holiday celebrations. We participate in municipal holiday celebrations. Every year, the 3rd Montreal Field Battery of Artillery starts the IRONMAN Mont Tremblant by firing a cannon.
We have a mobile museum that is not officially recognized. Why. According to an archaic law, to be part of the Canadian museum network as an official museum, the vehicle or cannon must be anchored to concrete and not be operational. Yet our vehicles and cannons are artifacts and we use them constantly to train and inform people.
There are 30 members, former members of the military, who volunteer for these activities more than 30 times between May and November each year.
As the funeral director for the Association du Royal 22e Régiment, I regularly meet with the families of deceased soldiers and look after funerals.
I am telling you about all these activities to show you that commemorations are still important in Canada.
Lest we forget. Ubique.
Keith Blake
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Keith Blake
2021-05-06 12:20
Good afternoon, everyone.
[Witness spoke in Tsuut'ina]
[English]
My name is Keith Blake. I'm the chief of police of the Tsuut'ina Nation. I'm also an executive member of the First Nations Chiefs of Police Association and am proud to represent 36 self-administered first nations police services across our country.
First, I want to thank you for this opportunity. It's a critically important discussion, and our communities have been speaking long and loud in relation to this very topic.
As this discussion relates to the enforcement of first nations, which really falls under the police jurisdiction, I thought it would initially be important to touch on the first nations policing program. I was fortunate enough to hear some of the other panellists, and this was a discussion point. I thought it might be good, however, to put it through a first nations policing lens.
The FNPP is over 35 years old and is in dire need of immediate change. The program is a signed funding agreement—in our case a tripartite agreement between the nation, the province and the federal government—which unfortunately creates inequities and unfair restrictions for first nations police services that are not experienced by the traditional mainstream policing services.
The FNPP has not yet been designated as an essential service and it falls under, as was mentioned earlier, the grants and contributions program. The funding is neither long-term nor sustainable, and our funding agreements, specifically in our case, are really year-to-year extensions.
This funding model truly does not allow us to properly prepare and strategize for the community's needs and public safety. It's also funded only for what could be termed core policing function—that is, responsive models. We're not funded to have community programming, prevention or the specified and specialty units other police services have.
It's important and, I think, really critical to note that former public safety minister Ralph Goodale stated that the program “does not cut the mustard” and is in dire need of change. The current minister, Bill Blair, stated that the FNPP needs updating.
Canada has a responsibility to improve first nations policing by making it an essential service and providing adequate funding for the nations to build and sustain proper infrastructure, including governance models.
This unstable funding model has really created an air of instability within our services, whereby our officers and our staff members don't feel that this is a program that will be sustained, and therefore feel that perhaps their profession and their jobs may not be sustained.
This disparity also includes what we receive in our salaries and in our pension and benefits. We end up usually losing our really high-quality officers to more mainstream policing services that have a sustainable funding model at a higher rate.
To sum up, our first nation police services are underfunded and understaffed and face unfair barriers and impediments; yet we still see unprecedented successes in effective, efficient and culturally appropriate community-based policing.
I will also state that we were very happy to hear of the infusion into the program in the last federal budget. We're guardedly optimistic that it will bring some needed support and changes within the program.
Speaking to the enforcement side, the enforcement role that the police undertake is just one important part of the structure of the justice system in our communities. There is the legislative piece, the enforcement piece, the prosecution and the adjudication component. Though we recognize that not many communities have the direct ability to change the way funding and the justice systems correlate, it is important to consider the historical traumas experienced by indigenous peoples, throughout our country and for generations, while considering the ongoing harm that inadequate funding causes in the justice resources that government bodies provide; it is to one of the most vulnerable populations within our country.
Nation-legislated offences are an important aspect of self-determination. They are created from a community lens to address the individual nation's self-identification and the specific needs of the community and the challenges they face.
A key piece of the justice framework is the prosecution of lawfully enacted nation legislation. Most jurisdictions across the country do not recognize or prosecute nation-legislated offences. The challenge most indigenous communities face in this country is the refusal or the reluctance to have provincial crown prosecutors or federal prosecutors undertake the prosecution of these nation-legislation cases.
Although this is unfortunately the situation that most communities find themselves in, there are glimmers of hope. In this instance I'm going to provide a brief glimpse into our Tsuut'ina Nation justice model.
We have a signed agreement with the Province of Alberta for what is termed our peacemakers court, which is unique. Across this province there are no other communities that have this agreement, so we are unique. Our court is configured in a healing circle and is mandated to have an indigenous crown prosecutor, an indigenous judge and indigenous court workers.
It also has a peacemaker present, who oversees this process. The peacemaking process can be utilized if the offence falls under certain criteria. Some offences are ineligible—things like manslaughter or sexual assault. The individual can be recommended throughout the peacemaking process and can be recommended by the Crown, by the judge or by the defence, and the recommendation can occur any time throughout that process, pre-charge or post-charge.
The process requires the approval of the victim. It is also an agreement that the offender must enter into. It requires the offender to appear before a peacemaking tribunal. That tribunal will consist of formally mediated, trained community members and elders. It's designed to be restorative and less punitive, and it really does look at the root causes of crime.
This peacemaking process enables the justice system to address what I spoke to earlier—the root cause of crime—as well as both Criminal Code offences and nation-legislated offences, through a traditional value system that provides the community a voice in determining what an appropriate resolution may be.
Although there are still many challenges and still much work to be done in indigenous communities across the country, I want to thank the committee for giving me this opportunity. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
View Maryam Monsef Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you so much, Chair.
Hello, colleagues. Boozhoo. Aaniin. As-salaam alaikum. I'm on Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg territory and I'm speaking from my basement in Peterborough—Kawartha. I'm grateful for the study you're doing and the opportunity to speak with you today about infrastructure accessibility and its contribution to the overall success of our communities.
I know that this year has been a really difficult one for everybody on my screen, and for your families and your teams, and I know that you know that it has been incredibly difficult for Canadians. The pandemic has disproportionately affected women and those who were already vulnerable, such as low-wage workers, young people and racialized Canadians. Like my parliamentary secretary, Gudie Hutchings, I want to salute everybody on the front lines of the fight against COVID, particularly our friends and colleagues from Newfoundland and Labrador who are coming into Ontario to help us with this difficult and virulent third wave.
The pandemic has reminded us of how vital our connections are.
Bridges, broadband, roads, waterways and community centres connect us, and we're stronger when we're connected to the people and the services that matter to us. COVID has magnified gaps in services and in the infrastructure available for specific populations, including in rural communities. Our government has been working to address infrastructure gaps in every community in this country since we formed government, and our infrastructure plan is working. Five years in, we are 40% of the way through this 12-year plan, and we have delivered over 40% of the funding available.
The investing in Canada infrastructure program includes over $180 billion in investments; 3,400 projects have been approved so far, including more than 2,000 projects just this past fiscal year during the pandemic.
Let me thank my officials and my team who, like you, are working from home. Their service delivery standards have not missed a beat. Within 20 to 60 business days, we moved these important projects forward for communities. I am so grateful to get to work with them. There have been 3,400 approved so far, with more than 2,000 in this past fiscal year, and with over 1,000 projects in this committee's 13 ridings.
In rural communities, more than $3.2 billion has been invested under the rural and northern stream, which is specifically dedicated to supporting rural communities and making investments in broadband, water, roads and community centres across the country. I want to thank the Liberal rural caucus for advocating for this separate stream and for bringing back the rural economic development secretariat through their advocacy.
This is a big step forward for Canadians living in rural, remote and indigenous communities.
It's a big step forward. These investments create jobs, more than 100,000 jobs each year, and improve our quality of life. The result is that more Canadians have access to high-speed Internet. More have access to clean air and clean water. Our communities are safer, more resilient and more inclusive.
These investments are important in rural communities.
They're important. These are strategic investments that create growth, fight climate change and build inclusive communities. They're more important now than ever.
You saw that the federal gas tax fund—which we intend to rename, by the way, the Canada community-building fund—is making a difference in communities across the country. To help ease the crunch of the pandemic, as per requests from municipal leaders, in 2020 we delivered the whole year's $2.2 billion in gas tax fund to municipalities.
More needs to be done. Budget 2021 includes our plans to conquer COVID, get Canadians back to work and build back better. That includes broadband as well as social infrastructure like housing and child care and supports for sectors hit hardest by COVID such as tourism.
There is a $6.2 billion investment already in place for broadband, and Budget 2021 added an additional $1 billion to this important fund. There are investments to go ahead with our national infrastructure survey. Of course, we're proposing to double last year's gas tax fund payment, just as we did in June 2020, and to provide the full 2021-22 amounts in one payment instead of the usual two installments.
Mr. Chair, I see your hand is up. Is that a signal that my time is up?
Christiane Fox
View Christiane Fox Profile
Christiane Fox
2021-04-29 11:09
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning, everyone.
I would like to acknowledge before I begin that I am on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin people.
Thank you to the committee for having me.
The Government of Canada has made it a top priority to ensure that all first nation communities have access to safe, clean and reliable drinking water.
The department has welcomed the Office of the Auditor General of Canada's report on the issue of safe drinking water in first nations communities, and shares her commitment on the issue. The report includes five recommendations, each of which aligns with actions the government is taking to ensure every first nation community has access to clean water.
The department remains committed to implementing the action plan, working in partnership with first nations and following the transformation agenda.
Let me begin by noting that the impact of COVID-19 in the past year cannot be understated. The pandemic has delayed the completion of infrastructure projects across the country, including projects aimed at addressing long-term drinking water advisories. The health and well-being of first nation community members remains our top priority.
First nations are leading the response to protect their communities from COVID-19. In some cases, this has had an effect on getting equipment and resources into communities, especially in remote and northern areas.
The government recently announced significant investments to continue work aimed at lifting long-term drinking water advisories, to continue supporting water and wastewater infrastructure investments, and to support the operation and maintenance of water and wastewater systems.
With the combined investments made as part of budget 2019 and the $1.5 billion in additional funding announced by the department in December 2020, by 2025, Indigenous Services Canada will have increased the annual funding it provides first nations to support the operation and maintenance of water and wastewater systems by almost four times.
The increase in operations and maintenance funding has already started flowing directly to first nations, with 2020-21 operations and maintenance top-ups having been provided.
In addition, budget 2021 committed $4.3 billion over four years to support infrastructure projects in first nations, Inuit and Métis Nation communities, and $1.7 billion over five years to cover the cost of operations and maintenance of community infrastructure in first nations communities on reserve.
Working with indigenous partners, these investments will make significant strides in closing gaps between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, support healthy, safe and prosperous indigenous communities, and advance meaningful reconciliation with first nations, Inuit, and the Métis nation. These investments will support continued action on infrastructure and clean water.
The long-term drinking water advisory commitment was made to address drinking water issues and concerns on reserve. Partnering with first nations, the government has collectively taken a number of important actions that have improved drinking water on reserve.
In November 2015, there were 105 long-term drinking water advisories on public systems on reserves across the country. Since then, 58 long-term drinking water advisories have been added. First nations, with support from Indigenous Services Canada, have lifted 106 long-term drinking water advisories. In addition to that, 179 short-term drinking water advisories at risk of becoming long-term have been lifted, ensuring clean drinking water to first nations.
Initiatives are well under way to address the 52 remaining long-term drinking water advisories in 33 communities.
Long-term solutions are under way in all cases where interim measures were put in place to provide communities with clean drinking water as soon as possible.
The department also continues to support a first nations-led engagement process for the development of that long-term strategy. We will continue to work to ensure that funding is available to commit towards these important water projects and address the long-term needs of communities.
In alignment with the Office of the Auditor General's recommendations, the government will continue to work with first nations to conduct performance inspections of water systems annually and asset condition assessments every three years to identify deficiencies.
Still, we realize more work needs to be done. The government values input from the OAG and other observers, and we will continue to work in concert with first nations partners to improve water infrastructure on reserve and support access to safe, clean and reliable drinking water.
In closing, we remain committed to clean drinking water because it is about building a sustainable foundation that ensures first nations communities have that access to drinking water now and into the future.
Meegwetch. Nakurmiik. Marsi. Thank you.
Thank you.
Drew Lafond
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Drew Lafond
2021-04-29 12:19
Okay, absolutely, I'll work on that.
Thank you for the invitation today.
[Witness spoke in indigenous language]
[English]
My name is Drew Lafond, and I'm here on behalf of the Indigenous Bar Association. I'm serving currently as the president in my second year of a two-year term. The IBA is a national, not-for-profit organization comprising indigenous lawyers, judges, law—
Drew Lafond
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Drew Lafond
2021-04-29 12:30
Thank you for the invitation and apologies for the delays, everybody. Thank you kindly for your patience.
[Witness spoke in indigenous language]
[English]
My name is Drew Lafond. I'm here as the president of the Indigenous Bar Association in Canada. Serving as president, I'm in the second of a two-year term.
The IBA, by way of background, is a not-for-profit organization comprised of indigenous lawyers, judges, academics and students across Canada. Our mandate, generally, is to promote the advancement of legal and social justice for indigenous peoples in Canada and the development of laws and policies that affect indigenous people, generally.
In response to the request by the committee for submissions, the past year has been rife with examples about territorial sovereignty, broken treaty promises between the Crown and indigenous peoples and more shockingly, the disvalue of indigenous lives, particularly the lives of indigenous women and youth.
The COVID-19 pandemic is worsening the underlying legal, political health, economic and social injustices that indigenous peoples and communities face. Against this backdrop, the IBA is acutely concerned with the treatment of indigenous peoples in the recognition and respect of their human rights. The IBA responded to the events in the last year by finding some pragmatic and timely responses to the rapidly changing political, economic and social realities facing indigenous peoples.
The first initiative we undertook was in April 2020. We partnered with researchers at the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan to conduct an online survey that examined the legal impacts of COVID-19 and the ability of the legal profession to respond to those impacts. As part of that study, the participants primarily spoke about jurisdictional issues that they were facing, such as conflicts over who has the authority to regulate who's coming into indigenous communities and who has the authority in relation to a community's pandemic and health response. It includes the exacerbation of jurisdictional issues that were happening prior to the pandemic, including the state undermining indigenous laws and legal authorities. Participants expressed concerns regarding consultation and negotiations where existing agreements and precedents meant to uphold indigenous rights were too often being ignored in the interest of economic revitalization plans. Concerns were raised about the case delays, which have worsened an already slow process and deferred indigenous rights matters further. These delays are uneven, with indigenous clients having to wait for access to the courts while resource extraction approvals by the Crown continue at a regular and accelerated pace.
We must address the clear gendered issues in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. These include increased family violence, disproportionate family care responsibilities faced by indigenous women, access to safe and stable housing, gender violence outside of the home, concerns about industry or “man camps” posing dangers to the health and safety of nearby indigenous communities, and worsening economic inequalities for indigenous women. These gender-specific injustices create barriers to indigenous women being able enforce their rights and access meaningful, legal participation.
Secondly, the IBA worked with the UBC faculty of law, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs' BC First Nations Justice Council, the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council and the first nations or indigenous legal clinic in B.C. to study 21 reports in the last 30 years concerning indigenous peoples in the justice system.
As a result of that study, we pulled 10 recommendations for immediate action, which I'll mention briefly here: create a national indigenous-led police oversight body; establish a national protocol for police investigations; redirect public safety funding to services that increase community safety; implement a multi-pronged indigenous de-escalation strategy; establish a national protocol for police engagement with indigenous peoples; amend Canadian and provincial-territorial human rights codes to include indigenous identity as a protected ground against discrimination; create indigenous courts; increase indigenous representation across all levels of the criminal justice system; and establish requirements that judges give written reasons in all indigenous sentencing cases and require that judges give written reasons in all indigenous child apprehension cases where a child is placed outside of the indigenous community.
Just to close off, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we're facing significant challenges in being able to centre our well-being and our legal rights, including our rights to health, access to our territories, to our laws and to self-determination. Canada has fiduciary obligation to support the enforcement of rights and protections for indigenous peoples.
Those are my submissions to the committee today. Thank you.
Clemente Bautista
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Clemente Bautista
2021-04-20 19:42
News articles, UN Human Rights Council reports, statements of UN officials and findings by the Philippines Human Rights Commission validate my testimony.
On the human rights and environmental violations of OceanaGold Corporation in the Philippines, our field investigations showed worsening degradation in the mining-affected area, such as water pollution, forest denudation, along with social impacts such as community displacement, land grabbing, militarization and increasing community disputes.
In December 2009, the Philippines Human Rights Commission reported that OceanaGold committed human rights violations in Nueva Vizcaya, particularly the displacement of indigenous peoples.
In February 2017, the Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources ordered the suspension of OceanaGold for serious environmental violations.
In December 2018, we submitted to the UN a complaint against OceanaGold. Our concerns were formally relayed by seven UN special rapporteurs to the Philippine government and the company.
Since July 2019, OceanaGold has not had a permit to operate. There has been an ongoing people's barricade since then to oppose the mine reopening. The people are supported by different sectors.
In December 2020, in a letter to President Rodrigo Duterte, Nueva Vizcaya Governor Carlos Padilla, along with the other religious groups, reiterated their opposition to the reopening of the mine.
The call to stop the operation of OceanaGold rings clear and loudly in the Philippines.
On the ombudsperson, it is my understanding that civil society in Canada agrees that the ombudsperson should have investigatory powers to get to the bottom of the facts by being able to compel the company to provide critical documents and testimony.
I hope that this will be immediately realized.
Maraming Salamat po.
Brandon Rhéal Amyot
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Brandon Rhéal Amyot
2021-04-19 12:17
[Witness spoke in Ojibwe and provided the following text:]
Aaniin kina wiya.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Hello, everyone.
[English]
My name is Brandon Rhéal Amyot. I'm student at Lakehead University in Orillia and a co-organizer with the Don't Forget Students campaign. I am speaking to you from the territory of the Chippewa Tri-Council of Rama, Beausoleil and Georgina. These are lands under the Williams Treaties and the Dish With One Spoon wampum, long stewarded by the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat. I mention this not just because it's important to recognize the land, but because of the impact that the pandemic has had on indigenous peoples and, in particular, indigenous students and students of diverse communities.
Members, I speak to you today to raise a grave concern about the impact of the pandemic on post-secondary education, students and recent graduates. This pandemic has taken an immeasurable toll on our financial outlook, our job prospects, our quality of education and, most important, our mental health and community health.
In the past year, students and recent graduates have fought hard to get governments to listen and to act. At the beginning of the pandemic, we called for the CERB to be extended to students and recent graduates. After almost two months of advocacy, the Canada emergency student benefit was launched. This provided four months of relative stability and support for students and recent graduates, but hundreds of thousands of international students and recent graduates were not eligible, and recent graduates who are still in search of jobs and who were not eligible for CERB also could not access this program.
The other large program, the Canada student service grant, as you all know, did not end up rolling out and also did not equitably address the impact of the pandemic on students. In the end and to date, of the over $9 billion originally promised for aid to students through the pandemic, $3.2 billion remains unspent. If I'm to be frank, I feel that politics came before students and before responding to the impact this pandemic has had on us, the post-secondary system and our communities.
We're now 13 months into this pandemic, and I probably don't need to tell you that here in Ontario, where I live and attend university, new COVID-19 cases have hit an all-time high. This third wave is particularly impacting me and other young people across the province and across the country.
The toll this has had on my mental health is difficult to measure, and it's difficult to measure the impact it has had on our mental health for all of us post-secondary students, but research just this past November from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations and others paints a bleak picture—one that I'm living in. The lack of attention to post-secondary from all levels of government during the pandemic and the legacy of systemic underfunding have led to the pandemic being able to wreak havoc not only on our education, but on our lives.
Most recently, one of the casualties was Laurentian University. This is the product of mismanagement, systemic policy failures and underfunding, and it's not only billions of dollars lost in economic activity but a community ripped apart. These systemic issues are not unique to one school. They are present in this system across the country.
Students and recent graduates were barely making ends meet as it was, and we're barely making ends meet now. Despite the picture that is sometimes painted, we are not a homogenous group of recently graduated high-schoolers. Students are parents, caretakers and workers. Some of us, including me, are disabled and are struggling to cope. This is not an environment conducive to learning, and it is not an environment conducive to innovation.
Meanwhile, recent graduates and those about to graduate are facing one of the worst job markets in a generation and will be crushed under the weight of record high student debt and unreasonable payments. What possible justification is there for collecting student debt payments and interest during a pandemic? In the best of times, these payments are difficult to make. We have to find a better way, not just to get us through the COVID-19 pandemic, but to fully realize the potential of post-secondary education in this country as a part of a social, environmental and economic recovery.
In the short term, all funds that were originally allocated to students—and additional funds—need to be invested towards supporting us through the pandemic. This means relaunching the Canada emergency student benefit—or whatever you want to call it—in May and including international students in the eligibility. It means including all soon-to-be-graduating and recently graduated students in direct supports. It also means extending the moratorium on student loan debt and interest payments until at least the end of the pandemic, with commitments to significant student debt relief.
We have to think about the long term, and that means systemic investments in post-secondary students and education. It means expanding the Canada student service grant with a goal of returning to a fifty-fifty cost-sharing model. It means increasing funding to institutions, and it means creating a federal vision for a universal post-secondary system in collaboration with students, workers and academics.
With these measures, the government can begin to address the impact that the pandemic has had on students and our mental health and well-being, and the long-standing inequities and gaps within the post-secondary system.
In closing, I want to thank this committee for reaching out to hear from students, and I urge members to take action.
Meegwetch.
David Chartrand
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David Chartrand
2021-04-15 12:35
There's a sad part about all this, when you look at the history of it and why we're where we are today in society: All that history is a reflection. My mom used to always teach me this. I speak fluent Saulteaux, and when I used to leave, my mom always told me:
[Witness spoke in Saulteaux and provided the following text:]
Gaawin-wiikaa waniik ke kan aan-di dibi ka ondaad izi ian.
[English]
She said, “Never forget where you come from”, and I never will. I grew up very, very poor, and I was raised by a single mother. I understand what poverty is. I understand what struggle is. However, we lived a life, and I'd never change it in a million years. I love the way we grew up, even though we were very poor.
At the end of the day, if you look at where we are in society, we shouldn't be here. I'll give a perfect example, and it's such a pictorial way to look at it.
In 1870, when Manitoba was created, the Métis leadership at the time set aside 1.4 million acres of land for the children. Section 32 of the Constitution was for the parents, but the 1.4 million acres of land was set aside for the children.
The Mennonites were given 586,000 acres. I mention them because they're a perfect example of what production can do and what the future can give you if you work as a community, and if we allow it to be run as a community and don't interfere. We can look at the progress of the Mennonites. They had less than half the land set aside, but today in Manitoba they're the richest, most powerful people in many aspects. I'm very proud of them. I'm seriously proud of them.
When you look at the Métis nation, we were chased off our lands, pushed away to live wherever we could find. We were called the “road allowance people”. Imagine for a second if our lives did not have interference, and we didn't get chased off our land. We'd be the most powerful and richest people in Manitoba today. There's no doubt. We're very strong thinkers economically and strong business people. We're hard-working people.
When you look at where we are today, a change needs to happen. We can't keep having society or Canadians as a whole say, “We're tired of paying for the indigenous people,” and then we just say, “You're using our land, you're using our assets and you're taking all our riches.” There's an imbalance that happens in ideologies with the growth of Canada and educating everybody. We need to find a balance in how we come together. This is the future. The future we're talking about today is taking us there.
I speak to industry, and I guarantee you that once they really see and hear you, they're not afraid of this anymore. They've gone past that. They're ready for business. They're ready to sit down. Trust me. I invest millions in shareholder institutions in this country and outside this country, and any shareholder who's investing wants to be sure their money is being well planned and well protected and that they're going to make money that will return to them. Industry knows now that they can trust a new pattern, a new process, a blueprint. It is where this is going to take us.
We cannot make a change, as I said earlier, nation to nation and government to government that is going to change things 10 years or 20 years from now. I guarantee you that right now. I've been fighting this since I was 18 years old and I'm 61 years old today. When you look at it from that perspective, change is coming and UNDRIP is another pathway that's going to really let us play catch-up so that indigenous and non-indigenous people can compare economically, educationally and so forth. It's about catching up. We're slowly catching up, which is something we should have done 50 years ago or 80 years ago.
Lorraine Whitman
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Lorraine Whitman
2021-04-15 13:08
Thank you.
Good afternoon. Kwe Kwe. Wela’lin.
My name is Lorraine Whitman, Grandmother White Sea Turtle, and I am speaking to you today from Mi'kma'ki, the unceded traditional territory of the Mi'kmaq L’nu people.
I would like to thank the members of this committee for asking us to appear before them to talk about Bill C-15.
NWAC is the voice of the grassroots indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people in Canada. As such, we have different perspectives from the male-led national indigenous organizations when it comes to issues like the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
I am going to turn the floor over to Adam Bond, legal counsel for NWAC, who will be going into the technical details of the bill and the UN declaration.
Before I do, I would put on the record that considering the importance of UNDRIP and the implementation of it in Canada, we are more than disappointed at how the consultation, or I should say the lack of consultation, has occurred. Indigenous women were not meaningfully consulted. Where is the honour of the Crown?
I want to bring this to your attention, because this is not an exception but rather the norm. This must stop. UNDRIP is about us, our families, our communities, the thousands of pages of the national inquiry testimony and its calls for justice. Specifically, call to action 1.3 demands that government end the political marginalization of indigenous women. Our exclusion from this important consultation flies in the face of these demands.
On saying that, I am going to ask our legal counsel Adam Bond to take over from here.
Wela’lin.
Gerri Sharpe
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Gerri Sharpe
2021-04-15 13:13
[Witness spoke in Inuktitut and provided the following translation:]
Good morning. I am joining you from Yellowknife and I am happy to be here.
[English]
President Kudloo has connectivity challenges this morning and sends her regrets.
The passage of Bill C-15 is important to all Inuit women and girls in Canada. Thank you for the invitation to appear before your committee on this legislation—
Gerri Sharpe
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Gerri Sharpe
2021-04-15 13:26
[Witness spoke in Inuktitut and provided the following translation:]
Good morning. I am joining you from Yellowknife, and I am happy to be here.
[English]
President Kudloo had connectivity challenges this morning and sends her regrets.
The passage of Bill C-15 is important to all Inuit women and girls in Canada.
Thank you for the invitation to appear before your committee on this legislation. With me today is Beth Symes, Pauktuutit's legal counsel.
I was born in Yellowknife to David Sharpe and Maudie Qitsualik. My mother is the oldest of 17 born to Gideon Qitsualik. My grandfather Qitsualik helped shape the Nunavut land claims agreement in which education and self determination were key. He is also one of the seal hunters on the back of the 1972 two-dollar bill.
My childhood was spent in Nova Scotia and Gjoa Haven, an Inuit hamlet in Nunavut. I was among one of the first Inuit women in 60 or 70 years to receive facial tattoos to strengthen my connection to my Inuit culture and identity. I work towards the advancement of Inuit for my children and my grandchildren.
Inuit women in the mining industry are an example of the larger issue of the lack of respect for the voices of Inuit women and the partnership that is needed with all members of our community for the future resource development in Inuit Nunangat and to make progress on reconciliation with Inuit. Progress with Bill C-15 will advance by supporting Inuit and project developers to find a common ground.
Pauktuutit is the voice of Inuit women wherever they live in Canada. I am the vice-president of Pauktuutit. Our board has representatives from each of the four regions of Inuit Nunangat as well as representatives from urban centres and youth representatives.
For 36 years, Pauktuutit has been the national voice for the rights of Inuit women and girls, working towards our health and education and economic, physical, emotional and social security. Pauktuutit had legal standing at the MMIWG inquiry and was at every hearing where Inuit families told their stories. Pauktuutit and ITK are co-chairing the Inuit working group that is writing the Inuit chapter on the MMIWG national action plan.
Pauktuutit is also active on the international stage on the rights of indigenous women. Every year, Pauktuutit participates in the session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women and the UN indigenous peoples permanent forum.
In October 2020, Pauktuutit was invited to two consultations with CIRNA and Justice on a preliminary draft of Bill C-15. As well, Pauktuutit filed a brief asking for changes to the draft legislation. Bill C-15 incorporates many of the changes that Pauktuutit sought.
Bill C-15 is a step forward for Inuit women and all Canadians on the journey towards reconciliation. It is important because it states that Inuit women will have the right to participate in decision-making in matters that affect them; the right to improvement of economic and social conditions including education, housing, health, employment and social security; the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; and the same rights and freedoms guaranteed to Inuit men. As well, Inuit women are able to enforce all their rights in the UNDRIP act wherever they and their children live in Canada.
For all of these important reasons, Pauktuutit is not seeking any amendments to the legislation. Pauktuutit asks members of this committee to work towards a quick passage of Bill C-15.
I conclude by addressing the development of the action plan to implement UNDRIP. The action plan must be distinction based. Gender equality is a deeply held value for all Canadians. The federal government must use a GBA+ lens to develop the action plan. The voices of all Inuit women must be heard.
Bill C-15 is critical to closing the gaps for Inuit women with other women in Canada in education, culture, language, health, housing and economic security. It is also critical to realizing the hopes and aspirations we have for our children and our grandchildren. The passage of C-15 is also a historical opportunity for Canada to advance the path of reconciliation with Inuit and other indigenous people.
Qujannamiik. Thank you.
Perry Bellegarde
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Perry Bellegarde
2021-04-13 11:06
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all of the committee members for agreeing to the 15-minute time.
[Witness spoke in Cree]
[English]
That was just a little bit in Cree for my friends and relatives.
I'm very happy to be here with all of you.
I used one of my spirit names, King Thunderbird Child. That is one of the names I carry. I'm from Little Black Bear First Nation and Treaty 4 territory in southern Saskatchewan. I gave thanks to the creator for this beautiful day and I acknowledged as well the Algonquin peoples here in the Odawa territory, where I'm sitting and working from today, their ancestral lands.
Chairman Bratina and honourable committee members, thank you so much for this opportunity.
I also want to acknowledge Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, who is with me on this presentation, and Willie Littlechild as well. I acknowledge them and thank them for their work.
Our Assembly of First Nations has long supported the adoption of a clear and strong legislative blueprint to advance the implementation of the United Nations declaration.
I appeared before this committee three years ago to support the adoption of Bill C-262, the private member's bill brought forward by Romeo Saganash, so I'm very pleased to now speak in support of a government bill that builds on the foundations of Bill C-262.
The Assembly of First Nations chiefs-in-assembly have passed numerous resolutions calling for the full implementation of the declaration. These resolutions included support for the adoption of Bill C-262.
When a filibuster prevented Bill C-262 from coming to a final vote in the Senate, where it did have sufficient support to be passed, our Assembly of First Nations chiefs-in-assembly passed a resolution in December 2019 calling for a government bill as strong or stronger than Bill C-262. That's my mandate. That's the direction the chiefs of Canada gave me as national chief: to get a government bill that's as strong as Bill C-262.
Bill C-15 meets that test. Bill C-15 provides a principled and pragmatic path forward to ensure that Canada respects and upholds fundamental human rights that have been affirmed and reaffirmed by the international community many times through consensus resolutions of the UN General Assembly.
I want to emphasize that the declaration did not create new rights, and neither does this proposed new bill. They also do not impinge on or detract from any inherent or treaty rights.
When I testified before this committee about Bill C-262, I felt very strongly that a collaborative and coordinated approach to implementing the declaration was critical to closing the social and economic gap facing first nations people.
Today, I am even more convinced that implementation legislation is the right way forward. I also applaud the work of elected officials in other jurisdictions who have taken steps to implement the United Nations declaration and note the chiefs' work with British Columbia in achieving the unanimous passage of a law in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia on November 28, 2019.
Given the deep racism and discrimination that first nations still face every day, Bill C-15's critical commitment to combat all forms of discrimination makes this bill both timely and urgent. I have seen how in B.C., with the implementation of the declaration, important work has been undertaken to address the racism against indigenous peoples in the health care system, using the standards in the declaration to bring people together in the health care system.
Now, we know that every bill can be improved. Since the tabling of Bill C-15, we have heard critiques and suggestions for improvement—most importantly, from indigenous peoples ourselves. Some AFN regional chiefs and first nations leadership have appeared before you and have identified areas for improvement from their regional perspectives. You should listen carefully to those positions. In Canada, some first nations are in support of Bill C-15 and some are against Bill C-15, while others support it with amendments.
What I am tabling today is a contribution from the Assembly of First Nations that constitutes some relatively straightforward suggestions for improvements. These are intended to respond to the overall objective of first nations to make the bill stronger and clearer. So this is indeed an historic moment.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada looked closely at the UN declaration and concluded that the declaration was “the framework for reconciliation at all levels and across all sectors of Canadian society.” They set that out as their first principle of reconciliation. That's how important the declaration is as a source of guidance and as a foundation for action.
Canadians have embraced the cause of reconciliation; implementation legislation is crucial to bringing that commitment to life.
With the improvements we've tabled, Bill C-15 will better enable us to move forward in a collaborative and coordinated way, consistent with first nations treaty and inherent rights and Canada's legal obligations.
I'd like to review those 12 improvements right now.
Number one is preamble clause 6. It's our recommendation that this provision is not accurate and should be deleted.
Number two is preamble clause 8. It's our recommendation that the word “racism” be added to this clause. Racism is a critical daily concern for first nations, and we believe strongly that it should be named.
Number three is preamble clause 9. It's our recommendation that the paragraph include explicit reference to the doctrines of discovery and terra nullius, and to be clear that, as the Supreme Court of Canada said in the Tsilhquot'in Nation case in 2014, these doctrines should not be part of the law or policies of Canada.
With regard to clause 2(2), it's our recommendation that the non-derogation clause be revised to more accurately reflect the working of the UN declaration, article 37, the previous approach in Bill C-262, and wording has been provided for you to consider.
Number five, it's also recommended that you consider adding two new clauses in the interpretation section, clause 2, to avoid any confusion or misinterpretation on some matters of great importance to first nations. The first of these two new clauses is clause 2(4):
For greater certainty, the rights of Indigenous peoples, including treaty rights, must be interpreted flexibly so as to permit their evolution over time and any approach constituting frozen rights must be rejected.
This provision is important because we cannot permit interpretation of treaty rights or any of the rights of indigenous peoples as frozen in time. Approaches that reflect stereotypes and old ideas, especially on treaty rights, must be overcome as an ongoing obstacle to moving forward.
Number six, and the second of the two new clauses, is 2(5):
For greater certainty, nothing in this Act is to be construed so as to diminish or extinguish the rights of Indigenous peoples, including treaty rights.
This provision makes it clear that extinguishment of the rights of indigenous peoples is not acceptable under any circumstances and cannot be part of Canada's laws or policies. Indigenous peoples have been subject to policies that sought to extinguish our rights and identities, such as the residential schools and other unilateral crown policies. Extinguishment is a systemic barrier to reconciliation that Canada must permanently and clearly reject.
Number seven, it's our recommendation that the subtitle for clause 4 or the purpose section is incorrect and it should be titled “Purposes”. Romeo Saganash spoke to this issue in his appearance on March 11. This is an obvious grammatical problem, but could lead to inaccurate interpretation in the future and should be fixed, as it has been flagged by first nations as a concern. I urge you to correct this at this study of the bill by committee members.
Number eight, in this same clause, it's recommended that the word “framework” be removed. As acknowledged in the preamble of this bill, the UN declaration itself is the framework, and reference to other frameworks simply cause confusion.
Number nine, I also note that the reference to the “Government of Canada” in the purpose clause 4 must be removed because Canada's obligation extends not just to government, but to Parliament, and this wording as it currently reads is inaccurate. The phrase “Government of Canada” could simply be removed, and I recommend you do that as we show in the table submitted.
Number 10, it is recommended that the time frame set out in clause 6 for the action plan be reduced from the three years to two years. Implementation is already long overdue. Canada should have begun implementing the declaration when it was adopted as a global minimum standard in 2007. Canada has been committed to implementing the declaration without qualification since 2017. I don't think it's necessary to wait another three years.
Number 11—which is similar to the preamble provision in number eight—the recommendation is to add the word “racism”. This word also must be added to paragraph 6(2)(a), as the wording is tracked in both parts of the bill.
Finally, number 12, I recommend that the words “implement”, “implementing” and “implementation” be used in the bill only in relation to implementing the declaration. For all other uses, I recommend that expressions like “carry out” be substituted, and you will see those suggestions in the table attached. If I have missed other examples, as the First Nations Leadership Council of British Columbia has indicated in their submission to you, I recommend that we adopt those recommendations to ensure that the entire bill is corrected, so that “implementation” is only used in relation to implementing the declaration.
Bill C-15 deserves the support of this committee and the support of all members of Parliament and senators. In my view, the improvements we have brought forward are modest and reasonable, and I urge you to adopt them when your committee gets to that part of your deliberations.
To conclude, I want to be very clear. The AFN is eager to see Bill C-15 move forward to final votes in the House of Commons and the Senate as soon as possible. First nations leaders and legal experts like Chief Littlechild poured their heart and soul into the creation of the declaration. They did this for a reason. They went to the United Nations year after year for more than two decades because they saw this international human rights instrument as key to building a new relationship with Canada.
Canadian government officials were also active participants through that long process at the United Nations. In fact, Canada deserves a lot of credit for helping to build support among other states so that the declaration could be finalized and adopted. This is something that we accomplished together and something that Canadians can be proud of. Yet, despite what was accomplished, more than 13 years have passed now since the declaration was adopted by the UN General Assembly, more than 13 years since the UN proclaimed the declaration as “the minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples [in all regions] of the world.” In this time we have had expressions of support for the declaration from federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments of all political stripes.
Canada has been part of numerous consensus resolutions at the UN committing to domestic implementation. Canada has made commitments to the indigenous peoples of the world that it would implement the declaration. It's time to complete this and make good on these commitments by working together. Canada has added the commitment to implement the UN declaration into the text of other laws passed by Parliament, including important bills on the inherent right of self-government in relation to child welfare and indigenous languages. What we still lack, however, is the legislation that implements the declaration and sets us on a course of recognition of rights and provides a framework for reconciliation, as the TRC wisely called for action. Bill C-15 provides that path. It's important for first nations, and I believe it is important for all Canadians to seize this opportunity now. We need to hear the words “royal assent” before the end of June.
Thank you. Kinanaskomitinawow.
Terry Teegee
View Terry Teegee Profile
Terry Teegee
2021-03-23 11:19
Mahsi cho.
[Witness spoke in Dene]
[English]
Members of Parliament, first of all, I want to acknowledge the territory that I am on, the Lheidli T'enneh Dene people of the Dakelh territory near Prince George, British Columbia. I want to also acknowledge the territories that you are broadcasting or attending this meeting from: that they are indigenous lands and have always been indigenous lands since time immemorial.
I want to thank the committee for the invitation to offer some remarks. I am honoured to speak on the topic of federal legislation to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This marks a significant turning point in the history of this country and follows a historic occasion in the province of British Columbia. On November 28, 2019, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, DRIPA, passed unanimously in the B.C. legislature with support from all parties in British Columbia.
DRIPA was widely supported by first nations in British Columbia. It represents a sea change from the provincial government's tradition of denying and opposing our titles, rights and existence as distinct peoples and an acceptance of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission call to action 43 “to adopt and implement the...Declaration...as the framework for reconciliation”.
This was a turning point in B.C. While much hard work lies ahead, we are starting to see a shift toward the human rights-based approach required by the declaration.
As an example, last fall the B.C. government commissioned a comprehensive review of anti-indigenous racism in the provincial health care system, promoting article 24 of the declaration and affirming indigenous peoples' rights to access to health care without discrimination.
Historic and recent events demonstrate the imperative for concrete measures to address racism in our society and the responsibility of the public governments to act. The United Nations declaration is a global human rights instrument, and human rights cannot be fully enjoyed where there is racism and discrimination.
The anti-indigenous racism and discrimination that continue today underscore the appropriateness of the human rights-based approach to reconciliation. Reconciliation cannot be based on denial of rights or racism. This is inherently contradictory and incompatible with upholding human rights.
Bill C-15, with the improvements, is an important next step in Canada's implementation of the declaration. It is a long overdue pathway for change, predicated on respect for human and inherent rights and the repudiation and eradication of racist and colonial constructs and doctrines that have no place in this country or our relationships.
The preamble is important, as it speaks to our collective history in Canada and the legacy of colonialism that has had tragic and profound impacts on first nations across the country, underscoring the need for the United Nations declaration to apply in Canada.
The bill must be clear that Canada is repudiating the doctrines of advocating superiority, like the doctrine of discovery and terra nullius. All interpretations of indigenous rights from an era based on colonial denial cannot continue. It must also be clear that implementation of the United Nations declaration is a responsibility of all in government to take actions and ensure consistency of laws as required under article 5.
Further, it is imperative that the co-operation and consultation carried out under the bill reflect the constitutional relationship between the Crown and indigenous peoples and key standards of the declaration, such as free, prior and informed consent. The bill must clarify and specify mechanisms and a plan needed for achieving consistency of laws. The new pathway will see laws of Canada shift to be more inclusive and respectful of the rights and our unique relationship and see new actions and approaches of partnership and participation.
Bill C-15 will complement the B.C. declaration act and contribute to the strengthened foundation of Crown-indigenous relations and reconciliation in B.C. where treaties were not concluded throughout the province and the land question remains largely outstanding, as does the implementation of pre-Confederation Douglas treaties.
The implementation of the declaration through laws and action by both Canada and the Province of B.C. will be a strong foundation for innovation and principled negotiations, improving and expediting the negotiation and conclusion of robust, enduring rights-based treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements in British Columbia.
The work of upholding and protecting indigenous human rights is urgent, particularly during a global health pandemic, when human rights are vulnerable and unordinarily impacted. The urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights of indigenous peoples is stated in the preamble. There are many actions that can and must be taken immediately and not delayed. This should be reflected in the time frames in the bill.
Chiefs in British Columbia have indicated that they believe this legislation meets the floor of the former Bill C-262, although they have identified areas where improvements are needed to address some drafting issues that may cause confusion and to reinforce issues of importance, such as those I have referred to here. We have provided you with a written table of our recommended improvements. We are happy to make ourselves and our technical staff available to further brief you, should you wish for more information regarding our position.
I thank you for the time today to speak in support of Bill C-15.
Mahsi cho.
Dillon Johnson
View Dillon Johnson Profile
Dillon Johnson
2021-03-23 12:20
[Witness spoke in Sliammon and provided the following text:]
ʔaǰečepʔot. toqʷanən kʷəṫᶿ nan. tawač ɬaʔəmɛn. čɛčɛhatanapɛč.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
How are you all doing? My name is toq?an?n. I am from Tla’amin Nation. I thank you all.
[English]
Honourable members of Parliament, thank you for the invitation to provide some remarks on Bill C-15 from a modern treaty perspective.
My name is Dillon Johnson. My Tla'amin name is toq?an?n and I'm a member of the Tla'amin Nation executive council. As mentioned in my sound check, the Tla'amin Nation territory is located in the area now more commonly known as the Sunshine Coast of B.C. We are a Northern Coast Salish nation that negotiated a modern treaty that took effect in 2016.
Tla'amin Nation is a member of the Land Claims Agreements Coalition, or LCAC, which was formed in 2003 by modern treaty holders to collectively address modern treaty implementation issues that are of a federal nature. Modern treaties are comprehensive land claims agreements. The first was the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, entered into in 1975. Twenty-six modern treaties now exist in B.C., Yukon, NWT, Nunavut, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador and cover more than 40% of Canada's land mass.
Tla'amin Nation is also a member of the Alliance of BC Modern Treaty Nations, which was formed in 2018 to collectively address modern treaty implementation issues that are of a provincial nature. All eight modern treaty nations in B.C. are members of the alliance, and we are currently actively engaged with the province on developing an action plan to implement B.C.'s UN declaration legislation, which is quite similar to Bill C-15, and came into force in November 2019.
Our messages in that work are similar to the messages that I am pleased to be able to share with the committee today. I'll focus primarily on what many consider, from a modern treaty perspective, to be the most significant provision of the declaration, namely, article 37, and then I'll close with a few points on the action plan required under clause 6 of the bill.
Article 37 states, in items one and two, that “Indigenous peoples have the right to the recognition, observance and enforcement of treaties...” and that “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as diminishing or eliminating the rights of indigenous peoples contained in treaties...”.
The effect of article 37 is clear: Every other article set out in the declaration must be read in the light of the primacy of the right of modern treaty holders in Canada to have their treaties recognized, observed and enforced.
I must say that this is not to minimize or detract from the importance of the other articles set out in the declaration, each of which must be implemented to enable the full recognition, promotion and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples. Treaty rights are already recognized in section 35 of the Constitution, but those rights have too often not been observed by politicians in their legislative initiatives, nor by officials in their administrative actions or when exercising statutory authority.
The requirement under clause 5 of the bill that government “must...take all measures necessary to ensure that the laws of Canada are consistent with the Declaration” means ensuring treaty rights will not be diminished or eliminated by legislation or any administrative action contemplated by legislation.
This is what article 37 requires, so when enacting legislation, entering agreements, adopting policies or contemplating administrative action, government must determine whether doing so would diminish or eliminate a right under a modern treaty, and when exercising statutory authority, every statutory decision-maker must ensure that their decision is consistent with the recognition, observation and enforcement of modern treaty rights.
The declaration recognizes the distinct standing of indigenous peoples with treaties. In light of this, it seems appropriate that the action plan contemplated by clause 6 of the bill should have a separate chapter for modern treaty partners. In my view as a representative of a modern treaty partner, an effective action plan should include an upfront commitment to the timely, effective and fully resourced implementation of modern treaties and detailed actions to support this commitment.
Unfortunately, the timely, effective and fully resourced implementation of treaties has not been a priority for the Government of Canada. When we entered into our treaties, the government repeatedly avowed that modern treaties are the ultimate expression of reconciliation. However, time and time again, we have encountered challenges in advancing our government-to-government relationship and our shared commitment to treaty implementation.
This act and the development and implementation of the action plan provide the Government of Canada and its modern treaty partners a unique opportunity to transform our government-to-government relationship and align it with the requirements of the declaration. We are committed to working collaboratively, efficiently and productively with the government to build the kind of treaty partnership that all sides envisioned when we entered into our treaties.
Thank you for the time today. I look forward to the question period.
Gina Deer
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Gina Deer
2021-03-23 12:16
[Witness spoke in Mohawk]
[English]
We are pleased to address you today concerning Bill C-218, to make note of the impacts it will have on the gaming industry in our community and to recommend bill changes, amendments, and accommodation or reconciling with the interests of Kahnawake and other first nations in Canada.
I will turn it over to Chief Mike Delisle for some of the history.
View Vance Badawey Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Madam Chair.
May I take this opportunity to first acknowledge that the lands that I'm speaking from here in Niagara are those of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe peoples. With great respect to those in the past and still residing here, I give that mention.
With that as well, I do want to thank many members for their bipartisan effort, there's no doubt, throughout the many years of this bill, Bill C-218, being brought forward. To those members, such as MP Irek Kusmierczyk, Brian Masse, Kevin Waugh and Minister Lametti, thank you for bringing this forward and putting it on the table. It's long overdue.
Folks, I think for the most part this bill attaches itself to equitable economic benefits for those across the country. As well, it brings something above ground, legalized wagering for single sport betting, and therefore it's not part of the grey market as it has been in the past.
Being from Niagara, I'll say there's no question that we are positioned to benefit. We are a border community, with two major casinos within an area that attaches itself to a great number of people.
I want to go back to that word “equitable”. With that, here in Niagara, hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs will be created. Tens of millions of dollars will be made. Of course, the equitable balance is going to place us with our competition across the border and there's no doubt we'll benefit.
Putting all that aside, I want to prioritize my time with our indigenous community.
Chief Deer, as well as Chief Delisle, sekoh. It's great to see you folks and I appreciate the time that you're giving us.
You both spoke earlier, and Chief Deer, you in particular had run out of time. With all due respect, I want to give you that time right now, with my time, to expand on some of the comments and points that you were about to make. I feel that a lot of what you and the indigenous community are discussing is very important to create that equity and to ensure that it is a partnership between the provinces and territories, and of course, the federal government.
With that, Chief Deer, I'll go straight to you and allow you to finish some of the topics that you were discussing earlier.
Brenda Gunn
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Brenda Gunn
2021-03-11 11:12
[Witness spoke in Northern Michif]
Hello, my name is Brenda Gunn. I live in Winnipeg and my family is from the Red River.
I am Métis, and, as noted by the chair, I am an associate professor at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Law. I have worked in both international and constitutional law, including the application of international human rights law in Canada, for almost 20 years now. I've developed a handbook on implementing the UN declaration and I've done many presentations on the UN declaration and how to begin implementing it domestically.
Today, I am speaking from Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis nation, my home territory. I want to acknowledge also the Algonquin people, as the House of Commons is located on unceded Algonquin territory.
Thank you for the invitation to be here today. I am very grateful to be here and I want to acknowledge my co-panellist as well.
I will start by saying that on March 22, 2018, I sat before this committee, invited to present on Bill C-262. As I prepared for my presentation today, I was wondering what I should say, thinking about what has changed and evolved over the past three years. I kept returning to the same thought: it is devastating that we have lost these three years, three years that could have been spent developing a national action plan building on the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the national inquiry, three years where indigenous peoples have continued to have lower socio-economic and health outcomes than other Canadians. Three years is a long time. In fact, it's a lifetime to my daughter.
I support this legislation because I think it is an important step toward reconciliation, toward recognizing inherent human rights, toward a fairer and more just Canada for all.
When speaking about the UN declaration, and why I believe it to be the framework for reconciliation, I often highlight four key preambular paragraphs that I'm going to read out to all of you now.
The first is, “Affirming that indigenous peoples are equal to all other peoples, while recognizing the right of all peoples to be different, to consider themselves different, and to be respected as such”.
The second is the UN is “Concerned that indigenous peoples have suffered from historic injustices as a result of, inter alia, their colonization and dispossession of their lands, territories and resources, thus preventing them from exercising, in particular, their right to development in accordance with their own needs and interests”.
The third is the UN is “Convinced that the recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples in this Declaration will enhance harmonious and cooperative relations between the State and indigenous peoples, based on principles of justice, democracy, respect for human rights, non-discrimination and good faith”.
Finally, the fourth is that the UN “Solemnly proclaims the following United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a standard of achievement to be pursued in a spirit of partnership and mutual respect”.
What these four preambular paragraphs tell me is that in Canada we need to stop believing in mythologies that recognizing the rights of indigenous peoples is going to somehow tear Canada apart. We have to accept that we are broken, that indigenous peoples have paid too high a price for the development of Canada for too long. We have to accept that the only way to reconcile is to recognize the rights of indigenous peoples and shift from a colonial relationship to a relationship based on justice, democracy, respect for human rights, non-discrimination and good faith.
With this understanding of why we have a UN declaration, and its significance in Canada, I want to just highlight one key aspect to the substantive rights included within the UN declaration. Specifically, I want to note that the UN declaration includes economic, social and cultural rights in areas such as language rights, education, health care, housing and economic development, all of which are critical to the exercise of civil and political rights.
Under the international human rights system, there is no hierarchy of rights.
Under Bill C-15, a national action plan that can be developed is critical to ensure that economic, social and cultural rights receive the same level of attention and consideration as political and civil rights.
During the prolonged debate over Bill C-262 there was unfortunate fearmongering that claimed that it introduced uncertainty, highlighted concerns around indigenous peoples' right to free, prior and informed consent, and implied that indigenous peoples might try to stop all resource development projects from proceeding.
From my perspective, these so-called concerns highlight the need for a better grasp of the UN declaration in Canada and the need for a coordinated effort to implement the UN declaration into Canadian law in a way that builds upon the over 20 years of international human rights jurisprudence on which the UN declaration is based. Canada was very slow in turning its support toward the UN declaration. There is a lot of work to do. We've lost a lot of time and now is the time for action.
While Bill C-15 is not going to resolve all problem and tensions between indigenous peoples in Canada, it can be part of the solution. Bill C-15 includes some critical steps toward developing a plan to implement and realize indigenous people's inherent rights. It includes important accountability measures to ensure Parliament puts words into action. It addresses some of the misunderstandings of the application of the UN declaration in Canada.
Marsi. Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
View Maryam Monsef Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Hello, colleagues. Bonjour. Aaaniin. As-salaam alaikum. I hope you're safe and well, and I wish the same for your loved ones.
I appreciate the opportunity to be with you today to thank you for all your important work, to speak with you about the progress that we all must work together to protect, about the path ahead, about the supplementary estimates, of course, and how we can work together to ensure that all women are able to benefit from the prosperity of this country and that those hardest hit by COVID-19 are able to land on their feet.
Let me first, though, acknowledge that a year ago on this day with the pandemic being declared, our lives changed forever. Women ended up taking the majority of the responsibilities for care for their loved ones in their chosen professions on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19. Women experienced higher rates of gender-based violence. With their kids at home and the elders they care for, increases in unpaid care responsibilities were realities for far too many. Women lost jobs faster than men, and those jobs are returning at a lower pace than men's. Without women in our economies and in our communities, Canada will not be able to achieve its full potential.
I would like to thank the Government of Canada's public service employees for all the ways they have pivoted, including our interpreters who ensure we're heard in both official languages, and their families for sharing them and for living with you as you take care of all other Canadians in this very difficult time.
My own team members, Guylaine Roy, deputy minister; Nancy Gardiner, assistant deputy minister; and the amazing, wears-many-hats Lisa Smylie, have been instrumental in moving us forward in key areas like ensuring that some 1,500-plus organizations received funds directly in their bank accounts in the early days of COVID-19 to make sure that they kept their doors open, stayed safe and offered a place of refuge for women, non-binary folks and children in their hour of need.
My team also ensured that, despite COVID-19, we were able to gather provincial and territorial ministers responsible for the status of women and get a historic agreement to move forward with Canada's first national action plan to end gender-based violence. The very same team, just a couple of days ago, hosted a two-day virtual summit which convened thousands of feminists from across the country so that their voices—the experts and their lived experiences—would shape the decisions that the federal government would be making. This is the same team that is going to be deploying, through the 2021-22 main estimates, the $125.5 million to support, through grants and contributions, the capacity building of women's organizations and LGBTQ2 organizations as well as support the national strategy to combat human trafficking and ensure survivors have what they need.
We have made progress. We stood in the House of Commons not too long ago commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women report being tabled. We now apply an intersectional gender lens to all our decisions, including the upcoming budget and our COVID-19 response. There are 100 women in the House of Commons. Senate is at parity. There are more women at the table now than ever before. Our voices matter. Our voices count. We're collecting gender disaggregated data. Tens of thousands of women have received support through the national housing strategy and have a safe and affordable roof over their heads. We've cut child poverty by some 40% through the child benefit, and the Canada child benefit has received additional supports for families directly into their bank accounts in this very difficult year that has been the pandemic.
We also have a women entrepreneurship strategy, the first of its kind, scaling up and supporting women entrepreneurs. We need them on our [Technical difficulty—Editor] employing others and contributing to the vibrancy of their communities and our country.
The universal broadband fund is not only going to connect every single household to high-speed Internet, but it's also addressing the cell gaps that create too many highways of tears in too many corners of this great country and putting at risk too many of our daughters, as we heard, in the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls testimony and report.
Tabatha Bull
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Tabatha Bull
2021-03-09 16:03
Meegwetch.
[Witness spoke in Ojibwa and provided the following text:]
Aanii, Tabatha Bull n'indignikaaz, Nipissing n'indoonjibaa, Migizi dodem.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Hello. My name is Tabatha Bull. I am from Nipissing First Nation, and I belong to the Eagle Clan.
[English]
As president and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, I want to thank you, Mr. Chair, and all the distinguished members of the committee for the opportunity to provide you with my testimony and answer any questions.
I'm speaking to you from my home office. I acknowledge the land as the traditional territory of many nations, including Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.
As the federal government continues to tackle a national infrastructure gap, noted as potentially as high as $570 billion, a portion of that funding needs to be dedicated to support indigenous infrastructure where this gap is most acute. As reported by the Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships in 2016, first nations peoples face an infrastructure deficit of as much as $30 billion. The infrastructure gap facing Inuit and Métis peoples has not been accurately quantified but it is estimated to at least match the deficit of first nations.
We must be mindful about what this means for indigenous peoples. Using the United Nations human development index, Indigenous Services Canada recently found that while Canada ranked 12th internationally in 2016, the on-reserve indigenous population ranked 78th, the same as that of a developing country. Furthermore, CCAB's research has repeatedly found that the lack of appropriate and reliable infrastructure is a barrier to indigenous business growth, including reliable Internet, transportation such as roads and airports, electricity and clean water.
CCAB's report “Promise and Prosperity” found that four in 10 indigenous peoples have either no Internet connection or a connection on which they cannot fully rely. These problems are more common for indigenous businesses located on reserve and in remote areas. The impact of this deficit was highlighted by the OECD, which noted that this lack of reliable Internet makes it more difficult for indigenous entrepreneurs in remote and rural communities to access business training skills programs. While free, online business skills training is widely available, poor Internet connectivity hinders its use. Additionally, infrastructure issues for indigenous people are exacerbated by climate change, as indigenous people in Canada experience warming rates at two to three times the world's average.
What is the solution?
First, infrastructure spending within indigenous communities needs to be driven by the needs articulated by indigenous communities and leaders and support building institutional infrastructure that empowers indigenous peoples and businesses. CCAB data indicates that most indigenous communities are building capacity to service their own infrastructure needs. In fact, in 2018, approximately 75% of aboriginal economic development corporations reported that they have the capacity to take on the work if the federal government put forward contracts to address infrastructure priorities in their communities. This is why CCAB supports, in part, the establishment of the First Nations Infrastructure Institute.
Next, there is a need for predictable and sustained funding so that indigenous communities can reliably plan and successfully maintain their community infrastructure. All levels of government must align funding to reduce duplication and close the gaps. However, successful execution cannot be done without the private sector. Sustainable solutions must leverage capital markets. Although the need is much greater, solutions like those proposed through the direction to the Canada Infrastructure Bank to invest at least $1 billion in revenue-generating projects that benefit indigenous communities can help close the infrastructure gap. The inclusivity of CIB, their management of risk and willingness to pursue creative financial structures can help build out vital indigenous infrastructure. Additionally, CIB instills confidence needed in project financing to help dispel myths of indigenous investment risk, which should facilitate greater investment by private sector developers in future projects.
CCAB commends the CIB on the expansion of its advisory and investment team to include indigenous expertise, and the appointment of Ms. Kimberley Baird, an indigenous leader, to its board of directors.
Projects such as the Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre Link, which will see the construction of a new 1,200-kilometre, 150-megawatt transmission line to Nunavut from Manitoba will bring renewable, reliable electricity and broadband connectivity to communities and industry for the first time, which is crucial for advancing the economy.
While the scale of the deficit is daunting, narrowing the deficit is not insurmountable. Infrastructure development in our communities requires patient capital, private sector investment and development expertise in partnership with indigenous peoples and businesses. Just like for all Canadians, when businesses are thriving, communities thrive. The difference is that indigenous communities have been historically underserved, under-resourced and systemically kept out of the Canadian economy. They have further to go to reach the same levels of well-being and wealth as non-indigenous communities.
CCAB is committed to continuing to work in collaboration with the government, our members and partners to help rebuild and strengthen the path towards reconciliation and a healthy and prosperous Canada.
Thank you for your time. Meegwetch.
Tabatha Bull
View Tabatha Bull Profile
Tabatha Bull
2021-02-22 16:55
[Witness spoke in Ojibwa and provided the following text:]
Aanii, Tabatha Bull n'indignikaaz, Nipissing n'indoonjibaa, Migizi dodem.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Hello, my name is Tabatha Bull. I am from Nipissing First Nation, and I belong to the Eagle Clan.
[English]
As president and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, I want to thank you, Mr. Chair and all distinguished members of the committee, for the opportunity to provide you with my testimony and to answer your questions.
Speaking to you from my home office, I acknowledge the land as the traditional territory of many nations, including Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.
From the beginning of the pandemic, the government provided supports for business. A number of those supports were required to be remedied to include indigenous businesses. CCAB has repeatedly highlighted the need for a navigator function specific to indigenous business to assist with the understanding and uptake of the various programs. Indigenous businesses have found navigating the bureaucracy, which often does not consider their unique legal and place-based circumstances, a significant barrier to accessing the supports necessary to keep their businesses alive and maintain their well-being.
The lack of targeted assistance for indigenous business to utilize these government supports underlines the need for an indigenous economic recovery strategy that is indigenous-led, builds indigenous capacity and is well resourced to support indigenous prosperity and well-being.
Such a strategy was not mentioned in the recent Speech from the Throne, nor the fall economic statement. We acknowledge the number of important renewed commitments that were made, but there was no mention of efforts to support the economic empowerment of indigenous peoples, businesses or communities. We hope the government will use the upcoming budget to signal to Canadians that indigenous prosperity and economic reconciliation matters.
During my previous appearances before the House of Commons Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs on May 29 and November 17, I stated that unique circumstances facing indigenous businesses were not initially considered when forming the eligibility of CEBA or Bill C-14. This left many ineligible for the wage subsidy. We appreciate that these gaps were remedied. However, we must not forget the additional burden the almost month-long gap had on many indigenous businesses.
Unfortunately when the government introduced Bill C-9, which extended the benefits for rent and wage subsidies, CCAB again had to underline that the government did not consider the unique circumstances facing indigenous business. In this case, it took 82 days to receive clarity from federal officials that the aboriginal economic development corporations are likely not eligible for the rent subsidy. This delay and the disappointing response demonstrate that indigenous businesses continue to be an afterthought when programs are designed to support Canadian businesses.
To support sound federal policy development and effective interventions during the pandemic and in collaboration with leading national indigenous organizations, CCAB undertook two COVID-19 indigenous business surveys to understand the impact of COVID-19. From our most recent survey, we found that nearly half had to let go of staff. Although 57% of indigenous businesses remained open throughout the pandemic, 30% of those businesses surveyed indicated they would survive less than six months without additional financial support. In this vein, I would like to underline that indigenous businesses have repeatedly told us they cannot take on any more debt.
I also mentioned in my appearances at House and Senate committees that numerous indigenous businesses were prepared to readily provide PPE to meet Canada's medical needs. Lists of such indigenous businesses were provided to numerous federal departments as early as March 2020, but only a small fraction of the over $6 billion of federal procurement contracts for PPE was awarded to indigenous business. In a press release of September 21, 2020, it was noted that seven indigenous companies were awarded contracts totalling approximately $2.5 million. This equates to 0.04% of the federal spend on PPE. We understand through discussion with PSPC and through our own combing of publicly available data this value is slightly higher. However we continue to be unable to obtain confirmation of the total spend on PPE in indigenous businesses.
To remedy this information gap, I would like to propose that this committee consider measures that would mandate government departments and agencies to report on their purchases from indigenous businesses as a part of their submissions to the main estimates and the supplementary estimates committee. Simply put, we cannot evaluate and improve upon what we do not measure and report.
I would like to leave you with this point of consideration. Too often, indigenous business concerns are an afterthought, resulting in indigenous organizations like CCAB working to prove to government that their response has not met the needs of indigenous peoples.
A reasonable starting point to support indigenous economic recovery would include procurement and infrastructure set-asides for indigenous businesses and communities respectively, and for government organizations to publicly report these expenditures.
CCAB is committed to continuing to work in collaboration with the government and our members and partners to help rebuild and strengthen a path toward reconciliation and a healthy and prosperous Canada.
Thank you, all, very much for your time.
Chi-meegwetch.
Graydon Nicholas
View Graydon Nicholas Profile
Graydon Nicholas
2021-02-22 17:10
Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Good afternoon, members of the House of Commons who are studying this private member's bill, Bill C-228. I am grateful for this opportunity to share some experiences I had during my days as a social work student, as a lawyer representing persons before the courts in New Brunswick, and as a provincial court judge.
I am a member of the Wolastoqiyik Nation from the Tobique First Nation. I worked with indigenous persons who are incarcerated at the Guelph Correctional Centre as a social work student during my studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in a field placement in January to April, 1973. Persons who were sentenced to two years less a day served their imprisonment there. It was an eye-opener for me, because I was already a lawyer before I went to study for my master's degree in social work. I defended indigenous and non-indigenous persons charged with summary and indictable offences under the Criminal Code of Canada.
When a client is found guilty or pleads guilty, information gathered by a probation officer is very crucial in making submissions to the sentencing judge on behalf of their client. As a probation officer, your duty is to make the best submission on their behalf to a judge for an appropriate sentence.
As a provincial court judge, you must listen to what is presented by the Crown prosecutor and the victim, read the victim impact statement, and listen to the submissions of the defence counsel and the accused, who may wish to speak. You must also read what is in the pre-sentence report and letters of support, and you must apply the principles of sentencing found in the Criminal Code. Whatever sentence you decide to give is not easy and is subject to appeal.
I have seen many persons who were repeat offenders. It could be because of their psychological state of mind, addictions or a deliberate refusal to abide by the conditions of a probation order or bail conditions, or because they didn't care. I call them “the walking wounded”.
There are no winners in the criminal justice system. The victims and the communities have legitimate fears that the offender will exact revenge unless fundamental changes are introduced into their lives. Programs must be made available for the rehabilitation of the offender. It depends on the length of the sentences in institutions or in the community, which need the resources to change the behaviour of the offender. Often, counselling may continue beyond the time served, and this can be put into the conditions of a probation order.
Indigenous persons have a high and a sad representation in penal institutions in our country. There are many factors that contribute to these statistics. Many are historical, many are because of poverty, and many are because the current justice system does not reflect the values of their communities. There have been many studies done to recommend fundamental changes in the criminal justice system, but not enough has been done to implement them.
I want to commend the initiative of the member of Parliament, Mr. Richard Bragdon, and your other members who have introduced this important legislative blueprint.
Thank you very much. Woliwon.
I can stay until about 5:45 your time.
Monika Ille
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Monika Ille
2021-02-05 13:17
Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairperson and members of the committee.
[Witness spoke in Abenaki and provided the following text:]
Kwaï! Nd’aliwizi Monika Ille. Aln8ba sqwa nia odzi Odanak m8wkaw8gan.
[English]
My name is Monika Ille. I'm an Abenaki from the community of Odanak.
I would like to acknowledge that I am speaking with you from Tiohtiá:ke or Montreal, the unceded territories of the Kanienkehaka, and traditionally a land of exchange and gathering of many nations.
I'm the chief executive officer of APTN. I'm joined by Joel Fortune, our legal counsel.
Launched in 1999, APTN is the world's first indigenous broadcaster. APTN is available to all Canadians as part of the basic service on most cable and satellite services. We broadcast hundreds of hours of indigenous programs each year, including national newscasts. We broadcast in English, in French and in up to 15 different indigenous languages.
Our programming showcases the creativity of Aboriginal peoples and provides a unique opportunity to share our perspectives with all Canadians.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has recognized the role of the APTN in building bridges and understanding between Canadians and Aboriginal peoples.
We are very proud of the influence we have had on Aboriginal expression. At the launch of the network, there were very few independent Aboriginal producers. Today, we work regularly with about 100 of them, not counting the creators and the support teams that back them up.
If the CRTC had not used its powers, APTN would not exist and Aboriginal peoples would still be invisible on Canadian screens. APTN is a perfect example of what can be accomplished by a policy born of the Broadcasting Act, implemented through hard work and goodwill and supported by the regulatory tools available to the CRTC.
We support the steps taken in Bill C-10 to recognize the place of indigenous peoples and indigenous languages in the broadcasting system, but—and this is a large but—there is a hole in Bill C-10.
Bill C-10 would remove the CRTC's ability to oversee and support the distribution of Canadian programming services such as APTN in an online environment. The CRTC powers that made APTN possible in the first place will, if Bill C-10 stays as it is, have no place in an online world. In the case of the proposed amendments to paragraph 3(1)(o), Bill C-10 is suggesting that indigenous people should be supported when they carry on traditional broadcasting, but not online broadcasting. This is not acceptable.
Today we're tabling amendments that will fill the hole in the bill. We have worked with the Independent Broadcast Group, a coalition of 12 different independent broadcast companies that includes ethnic broadcasters, local TV services, music channels, Canada's LGBTQ channel, minority language groups and others. Without the changes we're proposing, or something similar, the CRTC will not be able to ensure the fair treatment and visibility of Canadian services and apps, including APTN, in an online environment.
Right now, the Broadcasting Act is technologically neutral, so the CRTC does have the power to oversee online distribution, although it has exercised this power lightly.
To be honest, we don't understand why this authority would be taken away. You're well aware of the impact web giants have on newspapers and how difficult it is to bring the giants into the fold. Why, then, would we take them out of the Broadcasting Act when it comes to online distribution of Canadian programming services and apps?
In conclusion, there is much that we support in Bill C-10. The bill strives to better reflect indigenous people in broadcasting and the importance of indigenous languages and it acknowledges that we should operate our own broadcasting service. We fully support that aim. For services such as APTN and other indigenous and Canadian services, however, Bill C-10 as it stands does not see us playing a role in the future, and I'm concerned that it is actually excluding us from the online world.
Kchi wliwni. Thank you. I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
Marlene Poitras
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Marlene Poitras
2021-02-02 11:07
[Witness spoke in Cree]
[English]
Members of the committee, friends and relatives, thank you for inviting me here today to share the perspectives of the Assembly of First Nations. I'm honoured to be on the unceded territory of Treaty 6.
Before discussing the proposed legislation, I would like to give committee members a brief history of the Assembly of First Nations advocacy and leadership that led to the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action, the reason we are all here today.
Prior to the creation of the TRC, the AFN was a party to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. At that time, we stressed that compensation alone would not achieve the goals of reconciliation and healing. Rather, a comprehensive approach would also require truth-telling, healing and public education. From this, the TRC was created, resulting in 94 calls to action. I thank everyone involved in the commission, including recently retired senator, Murray Sinclair.
It has now been almost six years since the release of the final report of the TRC and its calls to action. While progress to implement all 94 calls has been slow, I am hopeful that this government's recent attempt to implement calls to action finally proceeds. We cannot waste time anymore. Ensuring first nations are included in Canada's citizenship oath will go far to symbolically affirm what first nations have known all along and what is already inferred in Canada's constitution: Our aboriginal and treaty rights already existed prior to the creation of Canada.
Here in Alberta, Treaty 6, Treaty 7 and Treaty 8 first nations are sovereign peoples and nations. Treaties were signed to allow us to share the land and to allow for peaceful coexistence. They were not agreements by first nations to give up their sovereignty, laws, forms of governance or right to self-determination over the lands and their people. While true reconciliation goes beyond implementing all 94 calls to action, implementing this initiative will better enable new Canadians and first nations to begin the journey of peaceful coexistence.
Each year hundreds of thousands of people decide to become Canadian citizens. Hundreds of thousands of people decide to call Canada their home by taking the citizenship oath. I have heard many who have attended these citizenship ceremonies remark on the emotional significance of this day. Many of these people have their own experiences of colonization and its effects. Many of these people share first nations' love and respect for each of our sacred lands, languages and cultures. For every year this initiative is delayed, we are delaying our ability to meet one another and our ability to start on this journey of peace and prosperity.
The AFN has been involved in discussions on the citizenship oath since 2016. We have worked with the honourable minister and his predecessors, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and the Métis National Council to develop language that reflects our unique histories and the contributions of Canada's indigenous peoples. The language contained in the bill differs from language put forward by the AFN. In 2017, our executive committee provided the following language as a guide, “I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada, including the inherent rights, titles, treaties and agreements with First Nations and the rights and agreements with Métis and Inuit peoples, and fulfill my duties as a Canadian”.
The inclusion of “inherent rights, titles, treaties and agreements” is important as it affirms Canada's legal obligations to first nations. These obligations are shared by Canadian citizens as well. As National Chief Perry Bellegarde so often says, “We are all treaty people.” That is why the AFN has been involved in providing guidance to Canada on changes to its citizenship test and accompanying materials as called for in call to action 93.
We are hopeful that with the passing of this legislation newcomers can begin to use the citizenship test and guide to develop a better understanding of the legacy of our many contributions to Canada, and the potential we all have in working and prospering together.
I'm also aware of the role the citizenship guide plays in its use as an educational tool in elementary and secondary schools across many parts of Canada. The time is now to implement these changes. Canada is reconciling with its past and renewing a commitment to a future free of racism, discrimination and intolerance. It is only through ensuring that Canadians understand this past and the ongoing injustices that we can move forward together.
This legislation represents a significant step. The only way we can truly reconcile past and ongoing injustices is by all of us, indigenous and non-indigenous peoples alike, working together to find a way forward.
I look forward to answering your questions.
Hay-hay. Knanâskomitinâwâw.
Frank Brown
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Frank Brown
2021-02-01 16:11
[Witness spoke in Heiltsuk]
[English]
I am of the Heiltsuk from Bella Bella. We are the salmon people. Salmon play a key role in our lives. Around 10,000 years ago, Heiltsuk built salmon weirs after the last ice age and also transplanted them from salmon-bearing streams to non salmon-bearing streams.
My chief's name, Yím̓ ás ⅄áλíya̓ sila, talks about when our first ancestor came down from above as a half-man, half-eagle and landed on a salmon trap. What you see here is an artistic rendition of that name, which goes back to the beginning of time.
We have a sacred covenant with salmon back to the olden times when food was scarce and an ancestor went into the salmon world where Maesila was the salmon chief. This ancestor brought back teachings, laws and ways to be in relationship with salmon. Still today, this ancient relationship is recognized within our Heiltsuk potlatch ceremonies, where twins lead our salmon dance. Many of our existing village sites are close to salmon rivers within our territory.
When we transitioned from the traditional economy to the cash economy, our rivers in our territory were overflowing with salmon. Our old people said that you could walk across the salmon, because it was so plentiful. Now, today, they are nearly barren of any salmon. In their last count, there were five or six pieces on their return.
Over time, we adapted and adopted and had a fishing fleet of both seine boats and gillnetters. In our recent history, salmon was a major economic driver for our village, with millions of dollars generated through our local band store, fuel company, fishing fleet, fish plant and other spinoff benefits. We currently own a 50,000-square-foot fish plant that is now completely underutilized. We not only had a large fishing fleet but shore workers who depended on the plant for a livelihood.
This statement is representative of the majority of coastal fishing communities in British Columbia.
We chose not to participate in finfish aquaculture because we could not turn our backs on wild salmon. We have opposed finfish activity from 2003 onwards, when an Atlantic salmon hatchery was established in Ocean Falls. My granny Maggie's grandfather, Andrew Wallace, was the chief of this village. This place had an abundance of salmon. They called it Ocean Falls because the river sounded like the ocean, and again, salmon was abundant.
The decision to hold our relationship to salmon and not participate in finfish aquaculture because of the disease, escapement and habitat impacts has had a devastating toll on the Heiltsuk people and has had a major impact on our employment and economic and social existence.
We have taken from wild salmon and it is now time to give back and look after these wild salmon. We need to invest in habitat restoration and research to find out why these salmon are not surviving in the ocean. Could it be the big blobs, the ocean acidification? We need to plan and support these fishing communities. It's imperative. This needs to be addressed at local, regional and transboundary levels.
We need to reconcile our relationship with the earth before we can reconcile our relationship with Canada, which is one of the major political drivers of the nation-state of Canada.
We're going to continue to uphold our responsibility and we're willing and able to work with Canada to address the needs of the salmon. We want to uphold the doctrine of priority that was established through Sparrow, where conservation comes first; first nations' social, ceremonial and food requirements are second; and commercial and commercial recreation come third and fourth.
We need to transition from DFO central management to a more collaborative management system.
We need to transition to support indigenous participation in all levels of management and fisheries science.
We need to rework environmental standards, with indigenous people involved, look at projects on a cumulative basis, pay attention to enforcement of regulations and account for the real price of resource extraction and continued pollution.
We need to treat salmon with the respect they deserve as a culturally important icon of not only indigenous people, but all people in Canada.
We need to consider a managed harvest of seals and sea lions to reduce their impact as a threat to the survival of wild salmon in B.C., and provide economic opportunity to first nations harvesters as a part of an economic reconciliation initiative.
We need to ensure indigenous people in B.C. are equipped as allies on salmon issues with indigenous organizations from Alaska to Oregon.
We need to support the development of the national indigenous guardians network, to be the eyes and ears on the land and sea.
We need to remove open pen fish farms from the Pacific waters to give our wild salmon a fighting chance, and to save the genetic biodiversity of these wild salmon as a strategy to manage through the precautionary principle.
Walas Gixiasa. Thank you.
Andrea Jibb
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Andrea Jibb
2021-01-26 16:54
I think Mr. Deleary may be having issues with his devices.
I'm going to introduce myself in the Ojibwa language to start.
[Witness spoke in Ojibwa]
Hi, my name is Andrea Jibb and I am a member of the Métis Nation. I live in London, Ontario, where I am the director of community planning at Atlohsa Family Healing Services. I am very pleased to speak to you today.
As mentioned earlier, we represent Atlohsa Family Healing Services. We are an indigenous-led, not-for-profit organization with over 30 years' experience working with the urban first nations, Métis and Inuit population in southwestern Ontario. We provide emergency shelter and a variety of services to the FNMI population.
We've operated Zhaawanong Shelter, which is a violence-against-women-focused shelter for indigenous women and their children, since 1989. Since 2019, we have operated the Alaaxiimwiing Atlohsa resting space, which is a low-barrier shelter for indigenous people experiencing homelessness in London, Ontario. Since 2017, Atlohsa has led the Giwetashkad indigenous homelessness initiative, which is a strategic planning process to address the overrepresentation of indigenous homelessness in our community of London.
The most recent point-in-time count conducted by the City of London showed that we have indigenous people making up 29% of the people experiencing homelessness in our community while making up 2% of the general population.
Atlohsa is located in London, Ontario, in the heart of southwestern Ontario, in close proximity to 10 first nations and in very close proximity to three first nations. It's about 20 minutes away from three distinct first nations communities. Historically, London, Ontario, has always been a hub for indigenous people, so we have a lot of migration in and out of the community.
In October 2020, Atlohsa launched the Giwetashkad indigenous homelessness plan, a strategic plan for addressing indigenous homelessness in our community from 2020 to 2023. It's based on the definition of indigenous homelessness done by Jesse Thistle and on the lived experience of indigenous people experiencing homelessness. We conducted a culture-based and indigenous-led community engagement with over 70 indigenous people with lived experience of homelessness.
The plan is a comprehensive strategy offering suggestions for front-line services, from community capacity building for culturally safe services to systems advocacy. At the core of the plan is the commitment to indigenous-led programs, services and initiatives, as we believe that indigenous people have the knowledge, strength and resiliency to alleviate homelessness for the indigenous community.
However, as we have mobilized at a community level with the creation of the Giwetashkad plan, we've done the groundwork in our community. In attempting to achieve the strategies, we've repeatedly come up against barriers to accessing resources.
In London, despite having numbers on par with many designated indigenous communities under the Reaching Home funding stream, we do not have an indigenous community designation. This means we must compete with mainstream service providers to serve the indigenous population in our community. Today our primary recommendation is to expand the indigenous community designation to include London, Ontario, and other communities. This would make it easier, because we are the sole service provider in London for indigenous homelessness but we receive a fraction of the funding to serve 30% of the population. Until we achieve more equitable levels of funding and discretion over levels of funding, we're going to continue to be underfunded and indigenous people will continue to be overrepresented on the streets.
Indigenous agencies need discretion over funding and consistent funding.
Thank you.
James Eetoolook
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James Eetoolook
2020-12-10 12:33
[Witness spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]
Thank you, and good afternoon.
I would like to thank the standing committee for inviting Tunngavik to speak about food insecurity in Nunavut and in our communities. I wish to thank you for being here to listen to our concerns. Thank you to my interpreter, Simona Arnatsiaq.
I am James Eetoolook, vice-president and acting president of NTI at the moment, as NTI is holding its election for president.
In 2017, research showed that Inuit age 15 and up were 70% food-insecure. They needed food, and they are studied the most.
James Eetoolook
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James Eetoolook
2020-12-10 12:36
Okay.
I can hear myself.
[Witness spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]
I'll get back to.... No, I can still hear myself.
James Eetoolook
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James Eetoolook
2020-12-10 12:37
Rates of food insecurity are at critical levels. We know that food insecurity directly affects individual health and well-being, as poor nutrition is linked to increased risk of chronic diseases. It lowers the learning capacity of our children and it has a detrimental impact on mental health.
Access to nutritious foods is not just necessary for individual well-being, but also for achieving broader public health objectives. Food insecurity threatens our cultural integrity, our overall social stability and has devastating effects on economic development. In the north, absolutely everyone is affected, even the food-secure.
Simply stated, healthy people perform better in all aspects of life. We all know that. As Nunavut’s economy develops, so too must the health of its population.
The COVID-19 pandemic further revealed the immediate need to address the severity of food insecurity experienced by too many Inuit families and highlighted the important role that food programs play in our communities.
When the schools were forced to close, school food programs—which were utilized by all of the students in most of the communities in Nunavut—were suddenly no longer available. This removed the one guaranteed meal a day for many. That's a lot. In fact, the Inuit health survey found that seven in 10 Inuit kids go to school hungry in Nunavut every single day.
It is a complex issue in Nunavut. The high cost of market food, our remote location, the decline in some animal stocks, population increases and changing hunting quotas contribute to the declining food security in Nunavut communities. I should say that the caribou in Baffin Island are only 255 a year for the largest population of Inuit and others in that region. We also have quotas on the beluga and on narwhal. It's very limited.
Climate change also poses a specific threat to food security in Nunavut because of its devastating effects on the availability of wildlife. We are seeing more than ever the changing migration patterns and reduction in caribou herds. The Government of Nunavut released survey results in 2013 claiming that the southern Baffin caribou herd had declined by 95% in the last 20 years.
Our rapidly changing environment is also posing a greater threat to the traditional hunting practices of Inuit. With sea ice breaking up early and unpredictably from year to year, the risks—
Clifford Atleo Sr.
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Clifford Atleo Sr.
2020-12-09 15:37
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon to everyone.
I'm going to say a few words in our language very briefly, but I will interpret.
[Witness spoke in Nuu-chah-nulth and provided the following translation:]
On behalf of Ha’wiih from Ahousaht, I'd like to formally thank the House Standing Committee on Fisheries for the invitation to talk about a most important issue affecting the whole west coast of Canada.
[English]
In particular, our area is severely impacted by what we're talking about.
I'll give you a little background in terms of pre-contact. Most streams and rivers contained salmon in British Columbia. Some had sockeye, some had Chinook and some had both. Others had chum, coho and steelhead. Some had pinks. Larger rivers had all species. Indigenous people managed them all very well.
Since contact, the newcomers learned to harvest and process all the species. Canneries existed on the Skeena River, Rivers Inlet, Fraser River, Nootka, Ceepeecee, Kildonan, Port Alberni, Victoria, Prince Rupert, Bella Coola, Namu and Tofino Inlet. I did make a mistake in my written document, saying that I'm not aware of any canneries operating today. There is one. It's called St. Jean's. It is partly owned by first nations people from Nuu-chah-nulth.
In terms of my history with fisheries, I grew up in Ahousaht. Every family used to participate in a commercial salmon fishery. Our participation enabled our community to be self-sustained. We didn't have to travel far because we fished most of our local stocks. All species were plentiful. All indigenous nations were similar to ours. We trolled, we gilnetted and we seined. This was 60 years ago.
Over time, our participation was reduced, as were the run sizes of all species. In the 1980s, salmon farms were permitted to operate on inlets and bays of the west coast of Vancouver Island. It was around this time that the Canadian government used our trollers to target U.S. chinook stocks. The strategy was to force the U.S. into negotiating what became the Pacific Salmon Treaty. However, our west coast of Vancouver Island chinook stocks were impacted negatively by this strategy. Our chinook stocks have never recovered from that policy and the policies that allowed large numbers of open-net pen fish farms to operate in west coast of Vancouver Island waters. Other species that have suffered as well are sockeye, chum, coho, pink and steelhead.
The existence of salmon farms along the west coast of Vancouver Island migration routes have severely impacted rebuilding efforts of all species.
The management by our Department of Fisheries and Oceans has not helped either. The evidence is that with the newcomers, laws were enacted with good intentions, with conservation being rather prominent in legislation, only to have DFO fall way short of upholding the law. DFO has the authority to manage, with devastating results. This evidence of shortcomings in management has resulted in the current dismal state of salmon stock coast-wide.
Poor logging and inappropriate land use policies by the B.C. provincial government have contributed to the destruction of salmon habitat. Functional habitat is required for long-term rebuilding of all salmon stocks in British Columbia.
Poor action in addressing climate change by all governments is not helping either.
Thank you.
Robert Chamberlin
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Robert Chamberlin
2020-12-09 15:42
[Witness spoke in Kwak'wala and provided the following text:]
Gila’kasla Hama’thlal Lal’kwala’tly. Wigya’xans hutli’laxa la’man wathdam. La’man wath’dam gyan no’kia kas Lal’kwala’tly.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Greetings, gathered people. Listen to my words today. My words are from the hearts of my people.
[English]
I just wanted to follow Cliff's lead and speak in my language a little bit. I am imploring you to hear the words that I have to say today on behalf of the hearts of the people of the first nations.
I am grateful for this opportunity to speak to you today about the state of B.C.'s Pacific salmon. This is a critical topic to B.C. first nations, as salmon are a primary traditional food source and are constitutionally protected and recognized by Canada's Supreme Court.
In terms of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, wild salmon are considered or captured within a number of the areas, including food security, culture, traditions, education, environmental standards and territorial decision-making, which of course means free, prior and informed consent.
This current government is beginning to set a table for the implementation of the United Nations declaration, and free, prior and informed consent must be a foundational component, especially to the current Discovery Islands fish farm consultations and accommodations process; to embrace the details that have been provided by the first nations involved in this consultation to meaningfully implement the precautionary principle, especially given that none of the Fraser River first nations were included in the consultations that will further impact their aboriginal rights.
The crisis that is B.C. Pacific salmon simply cannot wait any stretch of time for the fulfilment of the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
With the historic low returns, notably to the Fraser River, this is clearly the beginning of a downward spiral to extinction, and I say this with no drama. Historic low returns equal historic low eggs being spawned in the Fraser River. Historic low spawning eggs equal historic lower juvenile salmon entering the ocean.
It is an accepted fact that only 1% to 4% of juvenile salmon return to be the next generation of spawning salmon, so we can reasonably and logically anticipate that we will experience further historic lows, continuing the downward spiral to extinction in the coming years.
DFO Minister Jordan recently announced this government's response to Cohen commission recommendation 19. The announcement included the determination that the open-net cage fish farms of the Discovery Islands area posed less than minimal risk or harm to Fraser River sockeye.
This determination was founded upon nine science papers that were so-called peer-reviewed through the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, CSAS. The CSAS peer-review process is horribly flawed and provides great opportunity for an extremely biased outcome.
Proponents—in this case, a fish farm company and fish farm industry associations—are involved in in every component, every step, of determining if the operations pose a risk to Pacific salmon, such as the steering committee developing the scope of the science, terms of reference, and discussion paper development, and the peer review itself can be unduly influenced by industry, as they can select who will participate in the peer review.
This is far less than the impartiality and objectivity that I and many first nations, commercial and tourism industries and Canadians who rely upon healthy and abundant wild salmon stocks would expect as a reasonable starting point. Decades of science that withstood international peer reviews were ignored, even though that process was far more rigorous and subject to a completely impartial review assessment and outcome.
Sea lice was to be a 10th science paper related to the Cohen recommendation 19 announcement in determining the minimal risk or minimal harm. Sea lice were omitted from this suite of science papers.
This is extremely concerning, as fish farms are located sequentially along key out-migration corridors of juvenile Pacific salmon and produce billions of larvae that reside in the upper water column where the juvenile salmon are to be found. Given that fish farms are located where there is good tidal flush, the juvenile Pacific salmon are brought in very close proximity of areas inundated with billions of sea lice larvae. Sea lice can physically kill juvenile salmon, but also change their behaviours, making them more susceptible to predation.
Regarding the sea lice conditions of licence, the three sea lice average is the trigger for treatment on a fish farm.
Three sea lice may seem like an innocuous number, but considering that each fish farm has 500,000 to 700,000 Atlantic salmon, the number of sea lice becomes staggering. There's also the production of billions of sea lice larvae as well. Within the sea lice conditions of licence, there's an identified out-migration window for juvenile Pacific salmon, this being from March until June. The conditions of licence are to provide special regulatory protection for juvenile Pacific salmon during this time. The conditions of licence are completely and utterly untethered from juvenile Pacific salmon that they are designed to protect, as DFO does not monitor the presence of sea lice on juvenile wild salmon whatsoever—
Tyrone McNeil
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Tyrone McNeil
2020-12-09 15:57
[Witness spoke in Halkomelem]
[English]
Thank you for the opportunity to share here. I ask the interpreters to excuse me, as I don't have prepared notes to share with them.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Standing Committee. In preparing to do that, I couldn't help but think of being about seven or eight years old with my late mother. This would have been about 1968 or 1969, something like that. My mom was having a conversation with two other ladies about her age. They were talking about how many fish they had put away for the summer.
The one lady responded 108, and the other one said 52, and my mom's response was 96. They chuckled at my mom because with a big family she had put away only 96 jars of salmon. Those would have been quart jars back in the day. My mom's response was that it was not 96 jars; it was 96 dozen quarts of salmon put away in one season.
Hearing this narrative about where we are with salmon in today's state, I can't help but think of growing up on salmon, as we did throughout our early years, right up until a point in time when the stocks started declining, and we had less and less access to fish.
Also, on the other end of it, we had some studies that showed us as Stó:lo people. What you know as the Fraser River, we know as the Stó:lo. It's the mother of all rivers. It's the food provider for us, the Stó:lo people.
When the first Europeans arrived on the shores, they calculated that we Stó:lo people consumed about 1,000 pounds of salmon per capita per year. They looked at other tribes around us, but we had by far the greatest consumption.
I'm thinking of those two baselines in a narrative of reconciliation. My community now consists of 1,000 people. Had we still been consuming salmon at 1,000 pounds per capita, that would be a million pounds per year. We are certainly not anywhere near that, due only to how DFO regulates us and manages the fishery as a whole.
I would really encourage folks to think about that impact of going from such sustenance to where we are now, where we would only have a chance to fish every weekend like we did growing up. If we have a wedding, we barbeque fish. If we have a funeral, we barbeque fish. If we have a birthday, we barbeque fish. Sometimes we barbeque or cook fish just for the fun of it, because it's in our blood. It's in our DNA.
Thinking of that from a reconciliation manner, Mr. Chair, I would think that in this day and era of reconciliation and of the declaration, folks like you and the department would be doing everything they possibly could to ensure that at a minimum our sustenance is met. In doing that, you have tools in front of you around the wild salmon policy, the Cohen commission recommendations and the precautionary principle.
The 10 principles are supposed to be driving the federal bureaucracy, particularly around the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Articles 18, 19, 24 and 38 really stand out for me, Mr. Chair.
It's about utilizing existing tools that the federal government has at hand through the department, and what can be done to prevent any harm, particularly man-made harm. We know that there are climate change factors that we can do only some things about, but we're in control of the man-made influences, particularly around the open-net pen fish farms and the migratory route around the Discovery Passage in particular.
You can't imagine the harm that those fish farms do on a migratory path. When our salmon are out migrating right by these farms and there are lice outbreaks on them, DFO allows a 42-day window for those farms to respond to the lice. In doing that, they are not monitoring the amount of lice that are on the wild salmon, period.
I think there's a missed opportunity in terms of not using tools that the people have available right here and now to better protect and to do everything you possibly can to minimize the man-made negative impacts on something that's so vital to us. It's more than a food source. It's a way of being. It's who we are as Stó:lo people and who other first nations are as well.
Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Chair.
View Jaime Battiste Profile
Lib. (NS)
[Member spoke in Mi'kmaq]
I just want to thank you all for opening up with your indigenous languages. As a Mi'kmaq language speaker, it's always great for me to hear other languages.
I also want to thank you for your continued advocacy in speaking of UNDRIP. Many of you may know that my father was part of the initial UN indigenous working group that drafted UNDRIP.
I'm going to ask two questions. I'm going to open it up to the floor, because you probably all have recommendations on this.
Do you think that implementing UNDRIP is a good first start in achieving reconciliation and a recommendation for this committee to look at?
Second, in 2017, the Liberal government announced $25 million over four years to support the indigenous guardians pilot program, and with it sunsetting in 2021, I'm wondering if you think that it has been effective. Do you believe that when indigenous nations are able to co-manage the resources, that is one of the best practices?
I'll leave that open for you guys to answer, with short answers if you could, so that I can hear from everyone.
View Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Buenas tardes a todos y a todas.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you very much for joining us. It is very much appreciated.
Last week, at the subcommittee meeting, we heard from Martin Mylius, country director for CARE Columbia. You may know him. Mr. Mylius recommended that the international community recognize that Venezuelan women and girls need humanitarian assistance and attention specific to their needs. I remember the words “specific to their needs”.
Ms. Garcia, you talked in your testimony about the situation of women and girls.
How has the situation of displaced Venezuelan women and girls changed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of human rights?
Ms. Jimenez could then comment, but since you raised the issue in your testimony, I am putting the question to you, Ms. Garcia.
Jack Saddleback
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Jack Saddleback
2020-12-03 11:12
[Witness spoke in Cree as follows:]
miyo-kîkisîpâyâw. Jack Saddleback nitisîhkâson.
[Cree text translated as follows:]
It is a good day, Jack Saddleback is my name.
[English]
My dear friends and respected relatives as well.
My name is Jack Saddleback. I go by he/him pronouns, and I am from the Samson Cree Nation in Maskwacis, Alberta. I'm also an out and proud Cree two-spirit transgender gay man.
Today I am representing the 2 Spirits in Motion society as the co-chair and am speaking to you from the Treaty No. 6 Territory of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
I speak today as an invited member to address the need of Bill C-6 in the Criminal Code of Canada to criminalize conversion therapy in our country.
As stated through the Government of Canada's website on the announcements of the reintroduction of this bill:
Diversity and inclusion are among Canada's greatest strengths. Canadians must feel safe in their identities, and free to be their true selves. This is why the Government of Canada is acting on its commitment to criminalize conversion therapy in Canada.
I commend this strong stance and implore the Government of Canada to pass this bill with the following in mind.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the term “two spirit” by indigenous LGBTQ2IA people and organizations in North America, which was brought by a vision and offered by Dr. Myra Laramee in Manitoba in 1990. This extended the understanding of the term two spirit to be a pan-indigenous acknowledgement of the historical acceptance of gender and sexual diversity in indigenous communities prior to colonization.
I should say that this particular term of two spirit is intended, as well, simply as a placeholder until each community member can rightfully uncover and reclaim their ancestral knowledge and language of these sacred roles.
I feel it is vital that the voice of two-spirit people be within speaking to the bill for three clear reasons.
Number one is our indigenous world views of gender and sexual diversity and our inherent culture of non-interference and respect that have uplifted each community member for their unique gifts for time immemorial.
Number two is the attempted subjugation of indigenous children and indigenous communities to adhere to a patriarchal cisnormative gender binary system and the heteronormative narrative imposed on these lands.
Number three are the ongoing effects of these systems, such as residential schools, that put two-spirit/2SLGBTQ2IA peoples in harm's way when it comes to conversion therapy.
Speaking to point one, our indigenous world views of gender look at multi-dimensional aspects of a person in that their vessel, or body, is simply that—a vessel. These vessels certainly do come with teachings, and they are one part of a whole. Our understanding of gender is not based on the body; rather, it is based on the skills, gifts and roles that a person holds within their community.
Further, our indigenous world view of love understands that sâkihito-maskihkiy, or love medicine, was one of the most powerful of medicines graced to our people by kisemanito, or the great being. We understood that we had no place as human beings to stand in the way of who a person loves, as we understood that love is love.
There are a number of teachings I would be more than happy to share with you at a later date, but today we must focus on the latter two of my points when addressing conversion therapy.
In point two, we look at the harmful effects of the attempted subjugation of indigenous children and indigenous communities to adhere to a patriarchal cisnormative gender binary system and the heteronormative narrative that has been imposed.
These systems have been used through the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms itself, the bureaucratic systems that run our country, and more specifically, when looking at indigenous communities, the Indian Act, and how aspects of the act attempt to impose these mentalities.
Further, concrete examples of these imposed narratives come from my own family who have shared stories of the outlawing of our ways of life, and how this has impacted our traditional oral teachings, which in turn affected the openness of our discussions of gender and sexual diversity.
I say these teachings and the facts to lead me to my third point, that being the ongoing effects of these systems, such as residential schools, that put two-spirit/2SLGBTQQIA peoples in harm's way when it comes to conversion therapy.
Our own communities are still reeling from the effects of the aforementioned systems. Some of the biggest impacts are the pivoting and intergenerational trauma that has introduced a culture of interference for indigenous communities across Turtle Island.
Now I say the next few items with the greatest of care. Our own indigenous communities have been subjected to conversion therapy through the malicious use of residential schools that have harmed many indigenous families, and more specifically, numerous named and unnamed two-spirit children. These effects are still happening today. This is taking place bluntly or surreptitiously under the guise of biased cultural leaders, or where two-spirit community members are at the spear's edge of the harmful effects of conversion therapy that tries to strip them of their natural love for the same gender or more genders, or to discredit their own gender identity and gender expression.
When looking at Bill C-6, we must take into account the tremendous impact that colonization has had on our traditional world views and acceptance of gender and sexual diversity.
Thus, my friends, I reiterate that Bill C-6 must pass and must do so with the intention of being accessible to all citizens affected by conversion therapy, and it must be intersectional in principle, as conversion therapy looks different from culture to culture—
Marjolaine Siouï
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Marjolaine Siouï
2020-12-01 12:11
Thank you.
[Witness spoke in Wendat and provided the following text:]
Kwe, Eskenonhnia ichies’, Marjolaine Siouï Wendat endi’.
[Witness provided a French version, translated as follows:]
Good afternoon, I hope you're all doing well. My name is Marjolaine Siouï, and I am Wendat.
[Translation]
We would like to thank you for your invitation. We wish to acknowledge the unceded territory of the Algonquin Nation and the nations where we are.
I join you from my community of Wendake. I will share our presentation with my colleague, Mickel Robertson.
We will present some of the issues that are opportunities that we are collectively seizing to revive the economy and contribute to improving the health of our populations.
The examples we're going to present today are drawn from a report card that was produced by the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador.
When the First Nations population across the country is faced with major health issues, consistency is essential. Despite the investments made to support communities and businesses since the beginning of the pandemic, it is extremely difficult for many of them to be part of an economic recovery without the support and formal commitment of the provinces and the federal government, an essential condition for any progress in relations with First Nations.
As you know, an individual's health status is influenced by determinants and their environment. We note an urgent need to obtain telemedecine services from health and social services professionals and to access teaching staff in order to keep in touch and break the isolation and distress experienced by many of them.
Providing quality care and services also requires investment in the development, support and implementation of digital and information strategies for First Nations. The current situation demonstrates with certainty that laws and policies do not allow for adequate monitoring of information or surveillance of the health status of these determinants for our populations.
We need to strengthen our governance and capacity to ensure greater control and better management of our information. We cannot ignore overcrowding, lack of housing and infrastructure. For example, we also need to increase the number of seniors' residences in communities to protect our custodians of our traditional knowledge and cultures. This phenomenon has been mentioned many times, not to mention the shortage of staff, training needs and low salaries.
Despite the efforts and investments, we continue to face several constraints and difficulties in accessing PPE. A greater involvement of First Nations in decision-making processes is essential when developing strategies for the supply of equipment, testing—this was discussed earlier—and also vaccination, which is eagerly awaited.
Although the federal government has recommended that provincial and territorial governments work with First Nations, much more adapted communication strategies must be developed to inform and sensitize our populations about the benefits and also the disadvantages that the arrival of new vaccines could represent.
Finally, several essential workers spoke about both the vulnerability they felt working on the front lines and the vulnerability of the weakening health care system. Succession planning is needed. It is necessary to ensure that external personnel are trained and sensitized to the concept of cultural safety. The issues presented can all be resolved and seen as opportunities for economic development. However, this willingness and vision must also be shared by all.
I'll now turn things over to Mr. Robertson.
Erik Blaney
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Erik Blaney
2020-11-24 11:21
[Witness spoke in Coast Salish as follows:]
Ah jeh Chep Ot. Tiy’ap thote kwuth nun.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Hello everyone. My name is Tiy’ap thote.
[English]
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Erik Blaney. I'm an executive council member of the Tla'amin Nation.
I was the fire chief and incident commander for our local community outbreak. Our nation was experiencing an extensive COVID outbreak. At the time, it was the largest outbreak per capita in Canada. After a funeral in the community, we ended up with 36 cases of COVID in a small community of 700 at the end of September 2020.
Our nation sprung into action. We locked down our community, making it one way in and one way out to help protect not only our members, but the members of the neighbouring communities. We initiated a local state of emergency, which forced the closure of all government buildings as well as the only convenience store in the community.
In the midst of the outbreak, we noticed the deep-rooted social issues our nation was facing. We needed some serious help to battle the drug and alcohol and domestic housing issues that were causing our cases to rise dramatically. It was then that we realized we were in a dual pandemic, with the many opioid overdoses happening within the community.
Our hunting and fishing season was significantly impacted this year. Access to cultural activities are causing some major mental wellness issues within the community. Our nation was to host Tribal Journeys this year, which would have seen thousands of people coming to our community. Having to cancel that has had a big impact on the wellness of our community, in that everybody was really excited to have members from both the United States and Canada coming to our community to share culture.
The mental wellness of the first responders and front-line workers needs to be at the forefront of the second wave. Many of us are burnt out and experiencing PTSD from the first wave outbreak. Ongoing access to financial help for those who are off work due to burnout and PTSD is greatly needed.
As an incident commander during the outbreak, funding was the last thing on my mind going into the first few days, but after about four days the bills were stacking up. We worked with EMBC for financial assistance and reassurance that some of our expenses would be reimbursable.
The indigenous community support fund for first wave funding had been expended before we even hit the second wave. About halfway through our outbreak, our second wave funding hit the bank account, which dramatically helped us deal with the issue at hand, in that this funding is non-prescriptive and we could spend it at our discretion.
At the time of our outbreak, checkpoints weren't funded in the community. We were seeing that the checkpoint was actually one of the best ways to control the ins and the outs of the community and to track and monitor who was going into and out of the community, so that we could assist contact tracing with the health officials.
I'm really glad to see that checkpoints are now being funded through, I believe, federal funding that came through FNHA, which then reaches the community. I believe that putting that checkpoint in place the day after we got the positive COVID cases within our community really helped us get our numbers under control. It really helped us stop the spread.
Again, I think six minutes isn't much. I could go on for a couple of hours here, but I will pass the mike over to my colleague Dillon Johnson for more.
Dillon Johnson
View Dillon Johnson Profile
Dillon Johnson
2020-11-24 11:25
[Witness spoke in Sliammon]
[English]
Thank you, Erik.
Good morning and thank you, honourable members of Parliament.
I can't say enough about Erik's leadership during the crisis in our community. This man worked day and night for three weeks plus, and we owe him a debt of gratitude as a community for sure.
We did learn a lot of things from the outbreak in our community, some good things, some bad things. The community pulled together. It was really cool to see, but obviously it did expose some real issues.
One thing I wanted to raise with the committee this morning is how the overcrowding in housing in our community worsened the outbreak. We had multiple families living under one roof who were unable to quarantine and self-isolate in a safe way, and this put other loved ones at risk. It also exacerbated the outbreak.
While the worst part of that outbreak is behind us, we continue to be vulnerable, and we need investments in housing. This is why, in collaboration with our fellow self-governing indigenous governments, or SGIGs, we have submitted a housing stimulus proposal to the Government of Canada. The purpose of this is obviously to provide affordable housing to protect our vulnerable people from coronavirus spread caused by overcrowding. It's to address the long-standing housing gap in our communities that continues to contribute to poor socio-economic outcomes. Of course, importantly, it stimulates the economy in our communities and our regions through housing investments. It's providing meaningful employment and opportunities for people to put food on the table and to get through these difficult times.
I believe some members of the committee will have heard of this proposal submitted by the self-governing indigenous governments, and appreciate any support that can be lent towards that. We think housing is not a problem in our communities; it is a solution. We graciously ask for your support for this ask, which is $426 million in a targeted investment for safe and affordable housing in our communities. We have the data to back up this request.
I know I'm running overtime here, but I welcome any questions on that piece. I appreciate the time.
Jennifer Bone
View Jennifer Bone Profile
Jennifer Bone
2020-11-24 12:27
[Witness spoke in Dakota and provided the following text:]
Han mitakuyapi.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Hello, my relatives.
[English]
Thank you to the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs for the invitation to speak today.
My name is Chief Jennifer Bone, and I represent Sioux Valley Dakota Nation in Manitoba.
As I present before you, I ask for you to hear me with an open mind and heart. The year 2020 has been an incredibly difficult year for many of us. It's widely known that the COVID-19 pandemic does not differentiate between nationality, gender, religion, wealth or the economies and markets it affects.
We as a self-governing nation can attest to this. Dramatic challenges have impacted businesses in every part of the country and, in this context, Sioux Valley Dakota Nation was not spared. The COVID-19 pandemic still hangs over our community. It has brought economic activity to a standstill and has resulted in dramatic declines in community growth and self-reported indices of well-being. It has also brought this theme into a sharp focus. The loss of livelihood, social isolation and fear of contracting the virus have created fear and anxiety among our people, which has led to mental illnesses with an exacerbation of chronic disease, deepening addictions and other types of severe illnesses.
With a state of emergency announced in October due to a suicide contagion, our Oyate have mourned in loneliness. The severity of COVID-19 illness and subsequent risk of death is increased among those of us with underlying health conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer or pulmonary, renal or endocrine comorbidities. Reductions in health care access will differentially impact on indigenous populations for non-COVID-19 outcomes, for which we already have inequities.
Combine this with excessive ambulance wait times, and a bleak situation is further worsened. Action beyond the health system is vital to reduce such health injustices.
Equally, as an indigenous community, as we have known since before its onset, the impact of the pandemic and responses to it are not felt equally by different groups. Differential access to health care as a result of colonization and racism plays an important role in the creation and maintenance of inequities in health for indigenous populations.
The main priority in today's scenario has been to save the lives of individuals. This can be accomplished in part by creating awareness amongst them to follow social distancing measures and maintain proper hygiene. Socially isolating is easier for people with spacious homes with areas to walk and reliable[Technical difficulty—Editor] . On-reserve people living in overcrowded conditions with few or unsafe open areas, lack of running water and inadequate access to the Internet have been and will continue to be more vulnerable to the negative effects of isolation measures.
Social distancing and personal hygiene requirements have highlighted a legacy of housing neglect. Through the collaborative fiscal policy process, self-governing indigenous governments have provided Canada with concrete evidence of gaps that exist between our communities and other non-indigenous communities in Canada. We have hired experts in infrastructure and housing to provide factual information, yet Canada continues to underperform on its promises to resolve long-standing issues in these areas.
Our most urgent need at this point is adequate housing, both in terms of repairs required for healthy living as well as new housing to help with overcrowding.
Within Sioux Valley, the impacts evolving from COVID-19 are causing extensive social, psychological and economic damage. Far from being just a disruption, the pandemic is an indication of the urgent need to reset economic and industrial relations, health and other policy sectors. Those of our members holding insecure and casual jobs have been the first to be laid off and face unemployment with its attendant mental and physical health effects.
Overall, the pandemic will almost certainly increase inequities both between and within our members both on and off reserve. As a consequence of the widespread unemployment generated by the pandemic, our people continue to suffer systemically.
Eliminating all forms of mistreatment such as discrimination by reason of race or social class should constitute the crosscutting axis of all responses formulated by the standing committee to halt the spread of the virus within indigenous communities.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada called on the federal government to close the gap in health outcomes between indigenous and non-indigenous communities and to recognize indigenous healing practices.
Like many indigenous nations, Sioux Valley had stepped into this jurisdictional fear in response to COVID-19 with limited resources and funding. Some broad issues for deliberation have already been identified, including the rebuilding of public health care infrastructure, protection of workers, welfare, promotion of community voice, ownership of key instrumentalities, and more effective measures to address inequality.
The history of first nations' relationship with industy has been one of give and take. First nations gave and industry took. This cannot continue today.
Thank you again for your time and consideration.
[Witness spoke in Dakota and provided the following text:]
Pidamaya ye.
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Thank you.
Michèle Audette
View Michèle Audette Profile
Michèle Audette
2020-11-18 17:07
[Witness spoke in Innu as follows:]
Kuei! Kassinu etashiek, tshipushukatitunau, nin mak nussim Uasseuiat, kuei! Tshika itatunau innuat ute utassiuau Malécites, Abénakis, Wendat mak (Abe) Atikamek
[Witness provided the following translation:]
Thanks to the Wendat, Innu, Atikamekw, Malecite and Abenakis nations for welcoming me to this territory.
Good afternoon, everyone. I will speak in French.
Brenda Restoule
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Brenda Restoule
2020-11-17 11:14
Good morning.
[Witness spoke in Ojibwa]
[English]
First Peoples Wellness Circle is pleased to be a witness before the standing committee today.
As an indigenous-led organization dedicated to advocating for mental wellness in indigenous communities and supporting a segment of the mental wellness workforce, we would like to focus our comments around the first nations mental wellness continuum framework, where we get our mandate, to talk about mental wellness during COVID-19.
A recent workforce survey completed by the implementation team of the first nations mental wellness continuum framework found reports of noticeable or significant increase in rates of stress and anxiety related to COVID-19 and public health measures, including depression, substance use, violence, financial stress and stress in meeting basic needs. This matches the June 2020 Stats Canada report data on indigenous peoples mental health impacts during COVID-19, which saw fair or poor mental health, with stress and anxiety particularly noticeable for indigenous women.
Children and youth are experiencing higher rates of loneliness, stress and anxiety as a result of public health measures, and although there's a lack of indigenous-specific data, past evidence suggests that negative impacts are exacerbated by family and community challenges, such as intergenerational trauma; difficulty meeting basic needs related to housing, clean water and food security; financial insecurity and poverty; violence, substance misuse and mental illness; and inequitable access to health, community and social supports. Informal reports have also indicated that the public health measures have also retriggered memories of colonial trauma and are negatively affecting the well-being of families and communities.
This same workforce survey noted there was a noticeable decrease in access to health and social support services, although there is a noticeable increase in need for information around mental wellness and for better and more reliable connectivity and access to technology. This same survey highlighted how nimble the mental wellness workforce in our communities has been in meeting needs by increasing their partnerships to support families and communities; continuing to provide access to mental wellness services, including increased access through virtual care; being innovative in their approaches; and ensuring access to land-based activities and cultural events. However, there is concern around the capacity to meet the increased demand for services and supports for children, youth, families, elders and populations at greater risk of mental health issues as this pandemic continues.
It's expected that the mental wellness pandemic will last far beyond this pandemic and requires a thoughtful and planned approach. We offer the following suggestions.
Number one is access to culturally relevant mental wellness supports and services across the lifespan. Mental wellness supports and services in indigenous communities have been consistently underfunded compared to Canadians, resulting in a patchwork of supports and services that vary across the country. The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequities in mental wellness services, as noted by higher levels of crisis, violence and overdose deaths. Services have not been funded in ways that support the world view of indigenous people.
The first nations mental wellness continuum framework identifies the need to invest in community-defined and community-led programs and services across the lifespan that lead to collective outcomes for families and communities. They must be accessible in the home, schools, workplaces and community. Programs and services must be grounded in cultural practices, values and knowledge, including enhanced access and funding for cultural practitioners. We have seen many creative efforts by first nations to virtually share cultural teachings, engage in cultural practices, access land-based learning and activities, and access cultural practitioners to address negative impacts of COVID-19. These efforts support indigenous citizens to feel connected and give hope during these unprecedented times.
Number two is equitable access to virtual care for mental wellness. The public health measures required many mental wellness services to pivot to virtual care so that services could still be accessible to those in need. Wellness workers in indigenous communities have also pivoted to provide virtual care; however, there are challenges in accessibility and competency in using virtual care. Connectivity, access to reliable Internet services and the cost of services and technology are primary reasons that indigenous communities experience significant difficulty with shifting and accessing virtual care. These challenges are more pronounced in remote, isolated and northern communities. Canada has committed to digital health for first nations by 2030, but this is much too late.
Mental wellness teams and NNADAP treatment centres have already shifted services to virtual platforms, but the shift is hampered by poor connectivity and accessibility to technology as well as limitations in workforce capacity related to both reliable and culturally relevant information on ethics, privacy and liability, and access to supervision and IT support. Investments in connectivity, infrastructure, technology, sustained access to virtual care and human resources must happen more immediately. Otherwise, the gap in health inequity for indigenous people will continue to grow.
Number three is support for the mental wellness workforce. A needs assessment of mental wellness teams completed in 2019 identified that human resources did not match the need in communities to address the complex issues stemming from colonial traumas. Recommendations called for additional funding to meet the health human resource demand and to provide wellness services to the workforce to minimize effects of burnout, compassion fatigue and retention issues.
The heightened pressures on the workforce during COVID-19 to do more—to respond in creative and innovative ways, often with limited resources and tools; to provide advice to leadership; and to address the mounting crisis of violence, substance misuse, overdose deaths and mental health challenges occurring in communities—is taxing an already overburdened workforce. The workforce survey highlights the noticeable efforts by the workforce to respond, and initiatives spearheaded by indigenous health organizations have provided some level of support to the workforce, but it's not enough.
Investments to increase the mental wellness workforce are part of a solution to alleviate the pressures. However, investments should also consider strategies, such as debriefing, supervision and workforce wellness programs, including access to elders, healers and ceremonies, as being critical to maintaining and retaining the workforce.
Finally, investments to define evidence from an indigenous knowledge perspective on workplace mental wellness are required. Production of indigenous evidence-based materials on workplace mental wellness strategies, support for people to return to work, mental wellness training for supervisors and managers, and setting up—
Carol Hopkins
View Carol Hopkins Profile
Carol Hopkins
2020-11-17 11:22
[Witness spoke in Ojibwa]
[English]
I'm Delaware, of the Delaware Nation at Moraviantown in southwestern Ontario, and the executive director of the Thunderbird Partnership Foundation. Our mandate is to serve first nations across Canada in addressing addictions and mental health. I'm going to be talking to you, much like Dr. Brenda Restoule shared with you, about mental wellness and substance use.
I want to start by saying that in the context of the pandemic, culture continues to make the difference in supporting first nations people with their wellness.
We know that because we have a national information management system that supports and is used by adult and youth treatment centres across the country, and we have a culture-based assessment tool called the Native Wellness Assessment. We've adapted the information management system specifically to collect information from treatment centres that have adapted their services over the pandemic to collect information about wellness.
What we have found is that treatment centres have adapted services to outpatient services. Those outpatient services have been on-the-land services with appropriate public health measures. Through that outpatient service, we've seen at least a 5.5% to 8% increase in wellness.
Through a CIHR-funded study, we were able to determine that indigenous wellness outcomes are described as hope, belonging, meaning and purpose. There are 13 different indicators to measure those outcomes.
The 8% increase in wellness in outpatient services is in the quadrant of purpose. First nations people who are accessing those outpatient services on the land are improving in a sense of purpose. Having access to culture in relevant ways to support their mental wellness is significant.
In terms of virtual services, treatment centres have adapted their programming to virtual services, whether it's individual counselling, group counselling, live streaming, psycho-educational sessions or follow-up by telephone. We've seen as much as a 7.5% increase in wellness services.
The one quadrant where we see the greatest achievement is in the quadrant of hope. First nations people who are accessing treatment services virtually have a greater sense of hope.
Hope is having access to services that represent their identity and that are contextualized to reflect their community dynamics and what they're facing. We know that prior to COVID first nations people had a lot of inequity across the determinants of health: inadequate housing, lack of access to clean and safe water, and institutional racism. Those things have been exacerbated in the pandemic. There is greater stigmatization and negative experiences that are reported by first nations.
I'm talking about treatment centres, but community-based services have also quickly adapted their services to understand how to reach clients in addressing substance use. The things that have been exacerbated in the context of the pandemic have been increased substance use, increased suicide rates in some regions and community violence.
That is because communities don't have capacity to respond to the needs of first nations people. We heard youth say that mental wellness was not prioritized as an essential service. Youth were left on their own to figure out how to reach out to get support for addressing depression and anxiety.
As community programs, as well as treatment centres—the national native alcohol and drug abuse program and the national youth solvent abuse program—adapted and started offering virtual counselling and on-the-land services, or reducing their services with a modified number of people who would be residents of the treatment program with a reduced workforce, they all had a preference for culture.
That is also the greatest concern of communities: ensuring that they have access to culture. One of the things that we as an organization did was to create this community wellness hub where people would have continued access to peer support, resources and culture. We also heard from communities in which they are making elders and cultural practitioners available to deliver teachings and counselling over the Internet.
As Brenda said, we need greater capacity to sustain these innovations, and I provided a couple of examples in the presentation I sent. Communities that are suffering from addressing methamphetamines and opioid addictions have partnered with the local health authorities to ensure rapid access to addictions medicine and also to provide community-based outreach to ensure that people who are using drugs have the right, maintain the right and are supported in their right to health and are getting access to what might be happening for them to address methamphetamine and opioid addictions.
Tabatha Bull
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Tabatha Bull
2020-11-17 12:06
[Witness spoke in Ojibwa]
[English]
As president and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, I want to thank you, Mr. Chair and all distinguished members of the committee, for the opportunity to provide you with my statement and to answer any of your questions.
Speaking to you from my home office, I acknowledge the land as the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.
As Chief Poitras shared with this committee on November 3, 2020, “This pandemic has highlighted the inequities in this country and exacerbated existing challenges.” This statement underlines how, more than any other time in history, indigenous issues need to be top of mind for the Government of Canada and the Canadian public.
Since 1982, CCAB has been committed to the full participation of indigenous peoples in the Canadian economy. Our work is backed by data-driven research, recognized by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as the gold standard for indigenous business data in Canada.
From the beginning of the pandemic, the Government of Canada introduced efforts to build supports for businesses. A number of those supports were required to be remedied to include indigenous businesses, and while access is now available, CCAB has repeatedly highlighted the need for a navigator function specific to indigenous business to assist with the understanding and uptake of the various programs. Indigenous businesses have found navigating the bureaucracy, which often does not consider their unique legal and place-based circumstances, a significant barrier to accessing the supports necessary to keep their businesses alive and maintain the well-being of their communities.
The lack of targeted assistance for indigenous businesses to utilize these government supports further adds to the frustration and distrust that is the result of our history. This underlines the need for an indigenous economic recovery strategy that is indigenous-led, builds indigenous capacity and is well resourced to support indigenous prosperity and well-being. Access to external markets would be an important part of this work, including the need to back indigenous exporters as part of the recovery.
Such a strategy was not mentioned in the recent Speech from the Throne. Although we acknowledge the number of important renewed commitments made in the Speech from the Throne, I would be remiss if I did not express my disappointment that there was no mention of efforts to support the economic empowerment of indigenous peoples, businesses or communities. This was a missed opportunity for the government to signal to Canadians that indigenous prosperity and economic reconciliation matters.
As this committee is aware, in order to support sound federal policy development and effective interventions during the pandemic and in collaboration with leading national indigenous organizations, including my colleagues here today, CCAB undertook a COVID-19 indigenous business survey, as was discussed in the last session, as part of a COVID-19 indigenous response task force. The goal of the survey was to understand the unique impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on indigenous-owned businesses in Canada, and to encourage the Government of Canada to support indigenous businesses through purchasing PPE from them.
As we dug deeper into our research, we found that indigenous women disproportionally bore the brunt of the negative affects of COVID-19. More indigenous women-owned businesses reported very negative outcomes to their business—61% of women-owned, compared to 53% of men-owned. Women-owned businesses experienced higher revenue drops as a whole—50% or more—compared to 36% of men-owned. In addition, Inuit businesses are most likely to have experienced a revenue drop of 50% or more, compared with Metis-owned and first nation-owned businesses.
The CCAB appreciates the indication provided to us by Indigenous Services Canada that they will fund a second COVID-19 indigenous business survey this fall, and a further survey in the spring of 2021, to assess the impacts that the first and second waves of COVID-19 have had and are having on indigenous businesses.
It is our hope that the results of both surveys will inform effective policy and programmatic interventions to support indigenous business recovery and, in turn, support indigenous prosperity and well-being. We welcome an opportunity to provide that data to you in the future.
During my last appearance before this committee on May 29, I pointed out that the unique circumstances facing indigenous businesses were not initially taken into account when forming the eligibility of CEBA or Bill C-14. That initially left many large indigenous-owned businesses ineligible for the wage subsidy. We appreciate that these gaps were remedied. However, we must not forget the additional burden the close to a month-long gap had on many indigenous businesses.
Furthermore, with an understanding that there were on-reserve businesses that could not access the programs available due to unique taxation and ownership structures, the government announced the distribution of $133 million to support those indigenous business. Analogous to the work currently being done to extend CEWS and CEBA and the remediation of the rent assistance program, investigation and consideration must be given to the extended needs of the same businesses that were not eligible for that funding.
I would like to underline that indigenous businesses have repeatedly told us that they are not in a position to take on any more debt.
I also mentioned in my last appearance that numerous indigenous businesses were prepared to readily provide supplies or equipment to meet Canada's medical needs and the capability to rapidly scale up or pivot production to PPE. CCAB and other organizations, as discussed earlier, have provided lists of such indigenous businesses to numerous federal departments and through the task force database, but only a small fraction of the over $6 billion of federal procurement contracts for PPE have been awarded to indigenous businesses.
An announcement on September 21 noted a total contract of $2.5 million to seven indigenous businesses. This represents only 0.04% of the federal spend on PPE, nowhere near the 5% commitment made last year in Minister Anand’s mandate letter and the Speech from the Throne. The commitment is a target of at least 5% of federal contracts to be awarded to indigenous businesses, and in the throne speech, a support of supplier diversity. The frustration on the lack of progress on this 5% target has been evident in our discussions with our members and at our public Business Recovery Forum on September 16.
I would like to leave you with this point for consideration.
Too often, indigenous business concerns are an afterthought, resulting in indigenous organizations such as CCAB, NACCA and Cando working to prove to government that their responses have not met the needs of indigenous people. There is no better example of that than PPE, as 0.04% of federal spend on PPE is not a genuine effort to achieve economic reconciliation. A reasonable starting point to support indigenous economic recovery would include procurement and infrastructure set-asides for indigenous businesses and communities.
Lobsang Sangay
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Lobsang Sangay
2020-08-06 15:27
Thank you very much, Honourable Chair Geoff Regan, vice-chairs and members of the committee. Here in Dharamsala it is 1 a.m. Given the importance of the committee, I thought I should deprive myself of sleep and talk about China and Tibet.
[Witness spoke in Tibetan]
[English]
I just said in Tibetan what I said in English.
It's odd now that, because of COVID-19, which originated in Wuhan, instead of meeting in person we have to conduct such hearings online. It's an inconvenience caused to all of us, I think partly due to the Chinese government's irresponsible act of not letting us know that the coronavirus does transfer from human to human. Several thousands were infected, but they did not inform the world. That has led us to this very precarious situation.
I just want to say what I said in 2018, which is similar to what the U.S. government and others have been saying. The challenge posed by the Communist Party of China, or the Chinese government, is very serious. Either we transform China or China will transform us. Liberal values are at stake. Democracy is at stake. Human rights are at stake. Environmental issues are at stake.
Being the second-largest donor to the United Nations, China is trying to restructure the United Nations by putting in key personnel who support them and who compromise democratic values and human rights values. They are trying to redefine human rights. They have already passed two resolutions redefining human rights. If that is to continue, then the human rights we know, where freedom of speech and political rights are considered key, will be diluted. Then all over the world will be what happened in Tibet in the 1950s—elite co-optation of influencing politicians, influencing business people, intellectuals, the media.
All these things are taking place. Having travelled from Ottawa to Norway to Sweden to Australia, I've seen this over and over again. Because of this elite co-optation, the Chinese government is trying to get many people in your own countries favouring or supporting the Chinese version of events. This is what they are trying to do.
We see it in Canada with the issue of Michael and Michael. Obviously, my solidarity is with the family members of Michael and Michael, but it is a choice between morals and money. If the Canadian government submits to the Chinese government's demand to exchange Ms. Meng Wanzhou for Michael and Michael, that will lead to other cases where more Canadians could be arrested and used as hostages to put pressure on the Canadian government to give them concessions. I think the Canadian government has taken the right stand—not to succumb to the pressure from this Chinese government.
On the issue of Taiwan being a member of the WHO, I have been in favour of Taiwan's status being restored to pre-2016, when they were a member of the WHO. The coronavirus is simply a health issue, and Taiwan has performed brilliantly in dealing with the coronavirus. Their expertise and their experience could be invaluable in handling this coronavirus. Their role should be provided for and accommodated at the WHO, but because of Chinese government pressure they are not allowed in.
Then there's the security laws in Hong Kong. This is what we saw in Tibet with the unity laws in Tibet. Similar security laws were passed in Tibet, and these laws are simply to undermine democratic values, undermine freedom of speech and allow political oppression of the Tibetan people, environmental destruction of the Tibetan Plateau and the economic marginalization of the Tibetan people. All this is taking place primarily because the Chinese government has imposed, like Hong Kong, security laws, unity laws. These are used to undermine the freedom of the Tibetan people.
Hence, what we have been saying is that what happened to Tibet could happen to you. From Taiwan to Hong Kong, to East Turkestan, with a million or so people detained, including a Canadian citizen, a Uighur Canadian, Huseyin Celil, who has been detained in China, all this clearly shows that what happened in Tibet 60 years ago is happening all over the world. There are a lot of lessons you can learn from Tibet.
With this, I want to recommend that the Canadian government, especially the committee, pass a motion and support a middle-way approach as a policy which seeks genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people within the framework of the Chinese constitution. For that to happen, there ought to be a dialogue between the envoys of the Dalai Lama and the representatives of the Chinese government. This is, in fact, a win-win proposition for the Chinese government and the Tibetan people. I hope the committee will consider supporting a middle-way approach.
Religious freedom is vital. This year marks the 30th birthday of Panchen Lama and the 25th anniversary of his disappearance. We don't know where he is. He has disappeared for 25 years, and Panchen Lama's case reflects the tragedy of the situation for religious leaders and religious freedom in Tibet. The Chinese government is trying to interfere in the selection of reincarnated Lamas. The reincarnation is strictly a spiritual business that the Communist Party of China is politicizing. They are saying they will interfere and they will select the reincarnated Lama, and the Tibetan people should follow those religious leaders. This is in clear violation of basic human rights and basic spiritual traditions.
Also, I would urge the Canadian government to join alliances of democracies or like-minded countries that support and uphold liberal values, to be together, so open coordination with other countries to press on the Chinese government that they ought to be a responsible member of the international community, and international norms and regulations ought to be followed. If they don't do it, they will not get the respect they want as an upcoming superpower.
The Chinese government ought to respect human rights and liberal values of the Tibetan people and Uighurs, Hong Kong, and the people in Taiwan as well. These are the issues, which are very important.
Finally, Tibet is very important from the environmental point of view. Ten major rivers of Asia flow from Tibet. Tibet is called the “water tower of Asia”. More than a billion people depend on water flowing from Tibet. Climate change is all over the world, including whether the winter will be cold or warm in Ottawa, or the summer will be too hot or not. It's partly dependent on jet streams from the Tibetan Plateau, so that's also a very important matter. The Chinese government does talk about providing leadership in climate change, but their actions and their record in Tibet are abysmal, a very poor record, so the Chinese government should be held accountable as far as the environmental destruction of the Tibetan Plateau is concerned.
These points were also raised by a Tibetan-Canadian called Sangyal Kyab, who walked all the way from Toronto to Ottawa and visited Parliament, asking parliamentarians to support dialogue between the Chinese government and the envoys of the Dalai Lama to find a peaceful solution to the Tibet issue, and the whereabouts of Panchen Lama, and religious freedom.
I would like to end here, because my time is up, and thank the committee members for inviting me. Even though it is past midnight, past 1 a.m. here, I am here to represent the Tibetan people and to emphasize how important the Tibet issue is. With that, I want to thank the chair, the clerk and all the members of the committee.
Thank you.
View Arif Virani Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
[Member spoke in Tibetan]
[English]
For the benefit of those of you who don't speak Tibetan, I just said, “Thank you very much for participating in this special Canada-China committee today.”
It's obviously very late in Dharamsala. We are also very grateful to you for putting up with our procedural indulgences at the start of this meeting. Thank you for participating, but also thank you for your leadership in promoting internationally the cause of Tibet and the struggle of the Tibetan people for basic human rights.
I am the representative of 7,000 Canadians of Tibetan descent in my riding of Parkdale-High Park, one of whom you mentioned in your remarks—the fellow who walked back and forth from Toronto to Ottawa. Know that your advocacy is appreciated by my constituents and by me personally.
I want to raise at least a couple of issues in the time that we have. I'll ask you to be somewhat brief in your responses.
The first relates to the Panchen Lama. It is a very important year, as you outlined, because it is the 25th anniversary of his disappearance. At the age of six, when he disappeared, he was known as the world's youngest political prisoner and religious prisoner. He was six years old at the time, and he has not been seen for 25 years.
When the official Tibetan delegation appeared in the last Parliament in 2018, I felt it incumbent upon me to appear at that committee and ask some pointed questions. I asked Mr. Baimawangdui about the whereabouts of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, and he said that he is living a normal life with his family and does not wish to be disturbed. We know that there have been statements from the Chinese foreign ministry stating that he has finished his schooling and he is now working.
The first thing I want to ask you—if you could answer in about 60 seconds—is, are you satisfied with this type of response from the Chinese foreign ministry, and has the Central Tibetan Administration attempted to verify the accuracy of this information?
Doris Bill
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Doris Bill
2020-07-23 14:19
Well, dä`nnch'e, and good afternoon, I guess, where you are.
Thank you for the invitation to be a part of this very important conversation.
I look forward to sharing information about my community, the Kwanlin Dün First Nation, or KDFN, and summarizing a collaborative, community-driven approach we have created to address community safety concerns.
I am not here today to dispute whether systemic racism in policing exists. While I can't say it is as widespread as it once was, I think we can all agree it is real and that it lives on in many of our communities and institutions today.
Given the global conversation, I would like to premise my words by saying I openly support those speaking out against systemic racism and I acknowledge the harmful effects it has had on the health and well-being of first nations people, and indeed other people of colour.
At the same time, I see value in our existing policing services. While I am not a supporter of the calls to defund policing services, I think reform is needed. Here at home, I am sure our police department could use some additional resources, given the increased crime in our area. In some cases the increased demands and inadequate resources have had a trickle-down effect, especially as it relates to prioritized calls and response times. Citizens have reported it can sometimes take an hour or more for an officer to show up, and there have been calls for which no officers attended at all.
To provide further insight, shortly after I was first elected in 2014, KDFN began looking for ways to deal with community safety concerns. I think the breaking point came after the murders of two people. These unfortunate tragedies were the catalyst for change. It brought to the surface many issues and challenges around being an urban first nation.
Through many discussions with our citizens, we learned of numerous break-ins and violent crimes. We heard from single moms who were sleeping with baseball bats by their beds, from elders who didn't feel safe going out for a walk and from citizens concerned with bootlegging and drug houses. Simply put, our community was crying out for change.
It was also made very clear that there still remained a strong distrust of the police. People are often reminded of the trauma from residential schools, the sixties scoop and forced relocations when dealing with the police, not to mention that the intergenerational fallout continues to be a challenge. As well, let's not forget about the unfinished business surrounding missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
In many ways, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along with its 94 recommendations, and our constitutionally protected final and self-government agreements helped to establish the initial path forward.
The first step in any crisis is the admission that there is a problem, and there needs to be a demonstrated willingness to listen and participate in the hard discussions. That also means not being afraid to scrutinize your own environment. We cannot criticize if we are not willing to accept our own shortcomings. In our case, we chose to listen, learn from one another and put the words into action.
From the onset, we knew that if we were going to turn things around, we had to engage our community; and if meaningful change were to occur, it had to come from within. We also needed to reset and rebuild relationships with our community partners, so together, with the community's help, we created a comprehensive community safety plan.
We established an interagency working group of community partners including the RCMP; Bylaw Services; the Safe Communities and Neighbourhoods unit, or SCAN; Public Safety and Investigations; and the Correctional Service of Canada. We built an innovative community safety officer program, or CSO program, which launched in 2016.
It is the CSO program that I wish to highlight today. The program is designed to strengthen relationships. It works closely with law enforcement, provides early detection and de-escalation of conflict in the community, and is culturally responsive. It has been well received by our citizens.
I wish to be clear. The CSO program is not intended to replace the police. The four officers we have don't enforce the law but help to de-escalate in certain situations. They have also intervened in cases that could have ended badly, especially for women who were in unsafe situations.
It is a great example of conflict-free resolution. It has proven its worth not only to the community but to the RCMP, which has provided support to this program because it has been such a help. The CSO program frees up RCMP officers to do other work. The calls to service have been reduced significantly since the program started.
While funding continues to be an issue, the program has gained full participation of the Yukon government, the RCMP and many other community partners. We have learned a lot about each other in the process.
Any officer working in a first nation community needs to understand the dynamics, the culture, the history, and the trauma of our people. This is key to strengthening the connection and relationship with the community.
We remain committed to the process. Recently, we signed a historic document with the RCMP, defining a new relationship. The letter of expectation, or LOE, promotes a positive and co-operative relationship and provides policing priorities, goals, and strategies that are specific to the needs of KDFN.
Ultimately, it is about choosing a path where strong partnerships allow us to develop the kind of policing we know we need in our community. If we are truly going to make a difference, the justice system must create the space for community-borne safety initiatives like ours. I think we can agree that together we can bring about the much-needed change we seek.
Sha¨`w nithän, gùnálchîsh, mahsi cho.
Terry Teegee
View Terry Teegee Profile
Terry Teegee
2020-07-23 11:10
Thank you.
I just want to acknowledge the territory that I'm on right now, the Shuswap territory in British Columbia.
Seeing that I only have seven minutes, I just want to thank everybody for this very important matter in terms of policing. I think, during this pandemic since March, we've seen a lot of situations where many first nations have been adversely affected by policing, whether it was the three in Winnipeg, Chantel Moore on a wellness check in New Brunswick or Mr. Levi in New Brunswick as well. I myself have a family member, Everett Riley Patrick, who died in custody in Prince George, British Columbia.
Going forward, I do have a presentation. It was quite lengthy, and it really talked about the history of policing, not only in British Columbia but, I suppose, Canada itself.
I just want to move right to the recommendations, which, I think, are quite important. I have 14 recommendations that came from our organizations. I just want to note, too, that, as the regional chief of British Columbia, I hold this file for justice, as well as Ghislain Picard. He's the regional chief for Quebec and Labrador.
The first recommendation is really to accelerate federal action on the calls to justice of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The federal government finalized the report last year and promised an action plan within a year. That year has passed, and right now we really need those calls to justice implemented. There were well over 231 recommendations.
Recommendation number two is working with first nations on a legislative framework to support first nations-led policing with the proper financial resources to support self-determining efforts of first nations policing services. Recently we heard from the federal government that there is a promise to go from program funding to essential services funding, but it has to be much more than that, and more so for first nations that are asserting their sovereignty and their self-determination in terms of policing. There are tripartite agreements with many first nations and also with first nations that have treaties, and those need to be finalized in terms of making it clear how those laws are implemented. Really, I think creating a better relationship with federal and provincial governments is required.
Recommendation three is federal and provincial support for first nations' restorative justice initiatives and respect for the jurisdiction that arises from such initiatives. Prior to colonization, many first nations, Inuit and Métis peoples had their own model of policing and their own laws. They asserted their laws, and those laws need to be upheld.
Recommendation four is to immediately establish an independent review of the RCMP's operational practices involving wellness checks that provides recommendations for reforms. As expounded in point five, police are ill-equipped to deal with sensitive situations involving wellness checks. An independent review is needed to make recommendations on how other services, like mental health support, homelessness and other social work services, can be addressed without the police, and more importantly, in terms of mental health, it's really required there.
Recommendation five is redirecting fiscal resources from militarized policing to much-needed and more effective social supports such as mental health support, homelessness support and social work support that do not require police presence.
Recommendation six is the implementation of zero-tolerance policies on the use of excessive force.
Recommendation seven is for a review of the RCMP Act to include providing more power to a civilian oversight body and providing provisions that clearly state first nations' jurisdiction in matters of policing.
Recommendation eight is to develop legislation that outlaws white supremacist ideologies, while simultaneously increasing the role of the Canadian Human Rights Commission to deal with the private matters involving racist hate speech and action.
Recommendation nine is for greater accountability for the protection and respect of the fundamental human rights of first nations, including the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Recommendation 10 is to increase the use of police body cameras in first nations communities and access to video records.
Recommendation 11 is to enhance de-escalation and implicit bias training, including cross-cultural training.
Recommendation 12 calls for recruitment and promotion of first nations within the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Recommendation 13 is to change the name of Canada's national police force to police service—it's not a “force”, but should be a “service”—to signal to the rest of Canada that violence towards first nations and other racialized groups is no longer tolerated.
Recommendation 14 is to create a national first nations justice strategic framework, action plan and commitments, led by first nations with the full support and partnership of Canada and the provinces.
For British Columbia, we have a British Columbia first nations justice strategy that involves justice not only within the province of British Columbia, but nationally. I believe we're the only province and region that has a strategic plan. Thanks are due to our chair, Doug White, who's on this call right now, and our B.C. First Nations Justice Council for developing that plan. We need more like these.
Currently, we are working on a proposal to the federal government, and certainly we need support from other regions. We're out there soliciting other regions and other provinces' first nations to say what they would see strategically in a national justice strategy.
I think it really involves policing. For many years, since colonization began, the police force was used to take our people off the land. More recently, with the advent of the residential school policies, many of our children were taken from our homes and brought to residential schools.
In my language, Dakelh, the Carrier language, we call the RCMP nilhchuk-un, which, interpreted in our language, is “those who take us away”. Really, it was the RCMP who took our children away. In many respects, that's the way we still see the RCMP—as we've seen even during this pandemic—because of the many instances of excessive use of force on our indigenous people across this country. There definitely needs to be systemic change, away from very punitive policies towards indigenous peoples and racialized minorities in Canada.
Here, what we're looking at is more restorative justice and a call to look towards rehabilitation and towards alternatives to jails. In Canada and British Columbia, many first nations lead statistically in terms of incarceration rates and also in terms of those who have died during custody.
Right now, policing is seen as mainly a program fund, although Minister Blair has promised us right now that it will become more essential services funding. That is a positive move, but I think it needs to be more than that. You'll definitely hear from other indigenous leaders in this presentation calling for the same thing. We definitely need a change in policing in this country that we call Canada.
With that, I'd like to thank you all for listening to my presentation today. I look forward to the other presenters here today.
Mahsi cho, thank you very much.
Natan Obed
View Natan Obed Profile
Natan Obed
2020-07-23 11:21
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's great to see everyone. Ublaahatkut, good morning.
I'll be sharing my time with President Kotierk.
The Inuit Nunangat is the homeland for Inuit. It encompasses 51 communities spanning four regions: in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut.
We, as Inuit, disproportionately experience police violence compared to most other Canadians, as well as a host of challenges in accessing justice. Police violence isn't just an issue unto itself; it is part of a larger systemic issue in relation to social inequity. Things such as housing, mental health care, access to education, employment, poverty, all these things have to be discussed in relation to police violence as well.
We see police violence through the high rate of police-related deaths in the communities in comparison to other regions of Canada. Although aggregated data is not available for all four Inuit regions, and also not available for Inuit living outside of Inuit Nunangat, what we know paints a distressing picture of the systemic nature of police violence and discrimination against many of our communities.
There were 16 police-related deaths in the last 20 years. Nunavut's overall per capita rate of police-related deaths since 1999 is more than nine times higher than that of Ontario, and about three times higher than that of both Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
The situation in Nunavik is also grim. Between July 2014 and October 2018 alone, eight Inuit were killed and at least four injured by the Kativik Regional Police Force. Between 2016 and 2018, the KRPF was involved in about 10% of all cases of police-related deaths or injuries in the province, or 55 times that of the Montreal police force. The situation for Inuit in the Northwest Territories and Nunatsiavut, as well as for those living outside Inuit Nunangat, is less clear.
What is clear is that systemic racism, and racism itself, kills. The police force is largely itinerant. They don't have a clear connection to community, and there are very few police officers who are Inuit. This leads to the types of staggering figures that I just discussed with you.
Action is required to curb these disturbing trends, and these actions should include a systematic, independent review of the policing practices of the RCMP and the KRPF. In consideration of that action, Inuit participation in the construction of the governance of that review should be first and foremost. We are tired of being left on the sidelines when there are reviews, because in the end, our views and our perspectives are always at risk of being drowned out by other considerations.
Buying cameras and other measures should be taken to enhance transparency and accountability within law enforcement. Greater recruitment and retention of Inuit and Inuktitut speakers in law enforcement is necessary to build trust and improve communication between Inuit and law enforcement. Aggregated Inuit-specific data from across Inuit Nunangat, as well as outside Inuit Nunangat, is required to more fully understand and address police-related violence against Inuit.
I'll hand the rest of my time over to President Kotierk.
Aluki Kotierk
View Aluki Kotierk Profile
Aluki Kotierk
2020-07-23 11:25
Qujannamiik Natan. Ullukuut.
An imbalance of power and control has characterized the relationship between the RCMP and Nunavut Inuit since the relationship began. This is well documented through the Qikiqtani Truth Commission, which describes the relationship between 1940 and 1975. The RCMP came to our homelands as agents of the federal government, not only as agents of change, agents of colonialism, but also with the self-interested view of a country that needed to assert Arctic sovereignty.
There is no doubt that the relationship between Nunavut Inuit and the RCMP is complex and strained. The RCMP was instrumental in relocating Inuit families into communities; the RCMP was instrumental in sending Inuit children to residential schools; the RCMP was instrumental and in the slaughter of Inuit sled dogs.
I'll quote John Amagoalik in speaking about how his family was moved from Inukjuak in Northern Quebec, Nunavik to the High Arctic in Nunavut:
I think it is important for people to understand that when the RCMP made a request to you in those days, it was seen as something like an order. You are ordered to do this. The RCMP officers had a lot of power. They could put you in jail. That's the way they were viewed in those days. A request from the police was taken very, very seriously.
Today, many of the social and economic challenges experienced by Inuit are rooted in the loss of power and control caused by much of the colonial relationship. Due to the scarcity of mental health services and supports, the RCMP is often the first stop for Nunavut Inuit to get access to care, yet care is often not received. Instead, Inuit are targets of excessive force in interactions with the RCMP.
As Natan pointed out, since 1999 there have been at least 15 deaths in Nunavut at the hands of the RCMP. The RCMP does not understand our culture, nor does it understand our language, as demonstrated by the ratio of Inuit to non-Inuit officers in Nunavut.
No wonder there is a relationship of distrust between Nunavut Inuit and the RCMP. If in fact the purpose of the RCMP is to serve and protect, the onus and responsibility is on the RCMP to build the trust in our Inuit communities. There needs to be a trauma-informed approach that recognizes that in very recent history, Inuit have experienced a shift in power and authority, and that there are reasons why there are social ills in our communities.
There needs to be an independent oversight model that monitors the behaviour of the RCMP and its interaction with Inuit. There need to be more Inuit RCMP officers. There needs to be better cultural training for RCMP officers who will be working in our Inuit communities. In order to nurture and strengthen community trust or community relationships, RCMP officers need to stay in our communities longer so they become part of our communities.
Thank you.
View Mumilaaq Qaqqaq Profile
NDP (NU)
View Mumilaaq Qaqqaq Profile
2020-07-23 11:51
Matna, Chair.
Thank you to all of the witnesses for being here to share your wonderful knowledge.
Here's a shout-out to the IT team and translation for always keeping us on track.
I would like to point out as well that it is President Kotierk and President Obed. Her title is president, just as Natan's is.
My questions are for both of them. I'm going to start with President Kotierk.
Do you think that the relationship between the RCMP and Inuit has ever been a good one?
Aluki Kotierk
View Aluki Kotierk Profile
Aluki Kotierk
2020-07-23 11:53
Qujannamiik
I think it's a very complex relationship between Nunavut Inuit and the RCMP, one in which the RCMP relied heavily on Inuit because they were not able to live in our Arctic homelands, did not know what to eat, did not know how to keep warm and did not know how to transport themselves, so Inuit were the experts in that and very helpful. At the same time, they played a very authoritative role and were very intimidating, so many Inuit, similar to the quote I read from John Amagoalik, were intimidated and felt that they had no choice but to listen to the authority of the RCMP.
View Mumilaaq Qaqqaq Profile
NDP (NU)
View Mumilaaq Qaqqaq Profile
2020-07-23 11:54
Great. Matna, President Kotierk.
President Obed, oftentimes Inuit aren't necessarily on national headlines, and we have been having this discussion, especially around the Black Lives Matter movement, that indigenous lives matter. We have been seeing those kinds of things throughout the country. Can you talk to specific examples? I'm going to use one to kick us off.
For example, in Kinngait we saw that the video circulated and got national attention. Could you give us some more recent examples of those interactions between RCMP and Inuit that result in death?
View Mumilaaq Qaqqaq Profile
NDP (NU)
View Mumilaaq Qaqqaq Profile
2020-07-23 11:56
Matna, President Obed. I have about 30 seconds before the next question.
We talk about defunding the police, and I think that scares some people. Instead of raising it that way, what other services and resources should we be looking at investing in for Inuit?
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